A buyer can arrive through Google after making the important part of the decision somewhere else.

Imagine a buyer asks an AI assistant which supplier fits a particular problem. Your business makes the shortlist. The buyer discusses the alternatives, checks a concern, then opens Google and searches for your company.

They visit and buy. Depending on the attribution setup, Google may receive the credit. The assistant need never have sent a visit at all.

In GEO is a distraction, Marie Haynes reports that ChatGPT sessions amounted to 0.62% of Google organic sessions across her sample of 100 sites. Her conversion analysis also favours Google on total volume. Those are useful observations about the properties she examined. I haven’t inspected the underlying GA4 data.

Marie also recognizes the prospect of transactions happening without a site visit and argues for preparing for agentic commerce. I share her concern about chasing mentions or treating weak evidence as the basis for a new discipline. Where I disagree is how far referral figures can take us in judging the broader effort to influence how AI represents a business.

A report about arrivals cannot, by itself, settle what influenced the people arriving.

Around me, I see people increasingly asking an assistant first and using Search afterwards. That’s an observation about the people I encounter, rather than evidence that everyone behaves this way.

It does make me question what a Google visit means. Someone searching for a company could be starting their investigation. They could also be following a recommendation or checking a shortlist made during an earlier conversation.

Source link