AI Search Wars: Why ChatGPT’s Traffic Drop Matters for Your Marketing

You might have seen the recent news about ChatGPT’s traffic dropping, leading OpenAI to announce a code red. It seems rivals like Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude are starting to take a bite out of their market share. As a marketer, you might be thinking this doesn’t really affect you – just another tech battle, right? Well, it turns out, it has some pretty big implications for how we do marketing, and I’ve got the data to back it up.

What’s Happening in the AI Race?

Let’s look at the numbers that have OpenAI worried. This chart shows monthly app downloads, and while ChatGPT had a strong lead for most of last year, Gemini is really closing the gap. We’re also seeing Google’s Gemini catching up in website visits, and when people do visit Gemini’s site, they’re sticking around longer than they do on ChatGPT. This has reportedly caused OpenAI to hit pause on rolling out ads to ChatGPT.

At Exposure Ninja, we’re not really focused on who wins the AI race itself. Our main goal is to make sure AI tools are recommending your products and services so you can get more customers. But that’s where things get interesting.

AI Search Optimization: The New Frontier

We use tools like Semrush to track how AI tools mention different brands. This helps us figure out how to get them to mention brands more often. We call this AI search optimization: getting people to buy from you after AI tools recommend your products and services. We do this for clients and have won quite a few awards for it.

But here’s the thing: most brands have different levels of visibility on ChatGPT compared to Google’s products like Gemini. Let’s take CallRail.com, a call tracking business, as an example. Their visibility on ChatGPT is about 55 out of 100, meaning they’re mentioned or recommended about 55% of the time for relevant prompts. Now, compare that to Google’s AI mode, which uses Gemini – their visibility drops to 46%.

Why the Difference Matters for Marketers

This difference is a core reason why these code red announcements and the AI race outcomes have a real impact on marketing strategies. When you ask an AI tool like Gemini for advice, say, on tracking phone calls to your business, it gives you a detailed answer and even suggests software tools. CallRail often comes up as the top recommendation.

To make these recommendations, AI tools use sources from the web. They search for information on different websites and use that data to build their answers. So, if you want your business to show up in these answers, you need to do two things:

1. Get your website cited as a source: Like CallRail is here.
2. Get your brand mentioned on those cited websites: Especially on third-party review sites or industry publications.

If you can do both, you have a much better chance of not only being mentioned but actually being recommended. This is the future of digital marketing, and it’s where brands will be putting a lot of marketing effort.

Platform Differences in AI Recommendations

So, how does Gemini beating ChatGPT affect this? It all comes down to which websites these AI tools choose to pull information from. AI rank tracking tools can show us which websites are most frequently cited as sources.

Here’s what we see for ChatGPT:

• Top Cited Websites: User-generated content sites like Reddit, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn. Also, review sites like TechRadar and G2, plus competitors and other industry sites.
• Dominant Sources: Reddit and Wikipedia are huge for ChatGPT mentions.

Now, let’s look at AI mode (using Gemini):

• Top Cited Websites: Reddit is barely cited, and Wikipedia doesn’t even make the top 30. Google-owned properties like YouTube and Google itself are cited much more often.
• Preference: Gemini seems to trust competitors, vendors, and its own brand websites more. YouTube and Google are major sources for Gemini, unlike for ChatGPT.

It looks like Google favors its own properties and competitor sites, while ChatGPT leans towards consensus-building platforms like Reddit and Wikipedia.

Adapting Your AI Search Strategy

This shows that AI search optimization isn’t one-size-fits-all. In traditional SEO, we mostly focused on Google because it was so dominant. Bing just wasn’t a priority for most. But with AI search, you need to be aware of the different platforms, who’s leading, and importantly, which platforms your customers use.

There are demographic differences in how people use these platforms. For example, there are clear trends showing males and females preferring different AI tools. This explains why you might be doing great on one platform but almost invisible on another. If you’re not showing up on the types of websites that a specific AI platform cites, your visibility could be much lower.

Market shifts in the AI race can directly impact your business’s lead generation and sales from AI tools. If you’re not being seen on the platforms that matter to your audience, you could be missing out.

Get a Free Marketing Review

If all of this sounds a bit overwhelming and you just want a clear answer for your business, the team at Exposure Ninja can help. We offer a free digital marketing review. We’ll look at your visibility across all the different platforms, create a plan to boost your presence on AI and traditional search, and even analyze your paid search and website conversion rates.

We compile all this into a free video, showing you exactly what to do over the next 12 months. Some of the world’s biggest brands have requested this review, and the feedback is amazing. You do need to apply, so head over to exposurinja.com/review to get started.

And finally, the big question: Who do you think will win the AI race? Let us know in the comments!