AI visitors visit fewer pages and reflect more often than time-honored search visitors

Google forever tells us that AI search is better quality …

When they [users] Go to the decision to click, it is a more qualified click … What we hope to see over time – and we do not have any data to make available – is More time spent on the websitewhat we see organically in much more qualified guest for the website.

“What you see in something like the AI ​​review, when you bring friction to users, people are looking for more, and this opens up-to-date opportunities for websites for creators so that publishers can access. And they get higher quality clicks.

Unfortunately, we cannot even confirm or question these claims, because Google does not give us the opportunity to distinguish between searching for artificial intelligence and time-honored search movement in tools for search console or analytical tools.

But we Power Rate the user’s clicks from other main AI platforms … and we just did that.

We analyzed 81,947 sites to understand the quality of AI movement and user behavior, and the search and general medium user.

Here’s what we found …

We studied traffic in ~ 82 thousand The parties between May and June 2025 to examine how the user’s behavior changes depending on where the guests come from – searching, AI or “all”.

Looking at the indicators of user behavior, such as the average visits to the site, visits to the duration of the session, time on the website and reflection factor, we were able to see more about the quality of the “AI movement”.

I will call the channels as Search for movementIN AI movementAND General movement:

• Search for movement It is when the recommending domain is identified by the analytical platforms as a search engine – such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. This may also include visits from the search function powered by artificial intelligence, such as AI Google Review or AI mode.
• AI movement It refers to traffic from conversational AI platforms, such as chatgpt, embarrassment, Copilot and Gemini.

Visitors to joint AI platforms, such as chatgpt and embarrassment on average 4 pages. It is 1.2 fewer pages than visitors to search and 1.5 less than generally visitors.

AI users also look less deeply.

We analyzed the average duration of the session divided by the average duration of the page and found that AI users see much fewer pages per unit of session time (2.27) compared to searching (2.79) and generally (2.99).

To say that, visiting AI Down They especially spend a little longer on the site – eight seconds longer – but as we have already seen, they look at fewer pages.

This means that their time is more focused on selected several elements of the content – their sessions are longer, but shallower.

One of the interpretations of this is that AI users have clearer intentions.

They have already conducted research through artificial intelligence, so they will land on specific goals and a better idea of ​​what they are looking for – they don’t have to click to find them.

Our data also shows that AI visitors are 4.1% more willing to reflect than the search user, and 5.4% more chances of reflection than the average user.

This strengthens the view that AI users have less navigation and exploration.

If the user lands, spends 60-90 seconds and leaves, there are two possible reasons:

1. They got what they came for

The user visited the site and provided expectations well.

We have seen that this is the case – our visitors AI convert a 23 times higher rate than our visitors to the ecological search.

2. They were dissatisfied with the answer and on the left

On the other hand, of course, higher reflections can, of course, signal dissatisfaction.

If what the user sees does not immediately meet their expectations, it bounces – especially if contents Or On -site experience It is not yet intended for these users.

Wrapping

Is Movement AI really better? From the perspective of user behavior, not quite.

The only winning users of AI metrics was time on the site – and not much.

High reflections, low pages for the session and high time for information validation or “disposable” behavior.

After saying, the AI ​​movement probably drives a more “unplanned” discovery. If users get involved briefly and leave, this is not necessarily a bad signal, but a different context.

And of course there is a question of conversion.

According to our “anecdate” above, we observed higher conversion rates (~ 12%) with AI, like others.

In the courtyard manages 10% CVR with AI i And is the largest Tally acquisition channel– Haeling them, raise ARR by USD 1 million.

We have just issued a conversion tracking in Ahrefs Web Analytics, but as soon as we have enough data, I hope that I will delve into AI conversions.

Until then, I will follow AI data and share what I find.