Semrush reveals ChatGPT drives referral traffic to 30,000+ domains, reshaping search behavior and SEO strategies for education, tech, and content creators.
Education, technology, and software development websites are seeing a referral traffic boost from ChatGPT search, which sent traffic to more than 30,000 unique domains by November.
That’s according to a new Semrush analysis of 80 million lines of global clickstream data from the second half of 2024.
Search behavior changes. ChatGPT answered about 54% of queries with search turned off, with the remaining 46% using search.
- The average ChatGPT prompt length was 23, with a high of 2,712 words.
- The average ChatGPT search length was much lower — just 4.2 words, with a high of 301 words.
Search intent shift. In search, keywords have an intent—navigational, informational, commercial, and transactional (though there are additional types of search intent). However, the analysis found that only 30% of ChatGPT prompts fell into any of these categories. That means 70% of the prompts are unique and rarely seen in classic search engines (e.g., Google, Microsoft Bing).
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ChatGPT vs. Google and Microsoft Bing. The types of sites getting more referral traffic from ChatGPT than Google include:
- OpenAI-related domains, tech, and AI-focused platforms.
The types of sites getting more referral traffic from ChatGPT than Microsoft Bing include:
- Academic publishers and research, and education and technical resources.
ChatGPT vs. Google users. Google had 6.5 billion unique worldwide visitors compared to ChatGPT’s 566 million in December. Semrush also compared audience demographics and found:
- ChatGPT users are younger and more likely to be male.
- ChatGPT wins with students; Google wins with full-time workers, homemakers, and retirees.
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What Semrush is saying. According to the report’s author, Brenna Kelly:
- “For marketers and content creators, this data reveals an emerging reality: success in this new landscape requires a shift from traditional SEO metrics toward content that actively supports learning, problem-solving, and creative tasks.
Why we care: SEO continues to evolve quickly, and so is how people search and find answers. Making sure your brand’s content can be understood and cited by LLMs will only become more critical going forward.
