Black Friday is the most competitive shopping event of the year. Every brand fights for attention, loyalty, and wallet share. However, with the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, the way shoppers discover deals and make purchase decisions is slowly shifting.

Instead of scanning dozens of brand emails and ads, many consumers will ask ChatGPT to surface the best deals in a given category. For e-commerce brands, that means visibility is no longer limited to your own website or ad strategy. 

In our recent research across 100 e-commerce brands, we found a 0.57 correlation between referral traffic and ChatGPT traffic, which is a moderate positive relationship. In practice, this means that when referral traffic increases, ChatGPT-driven traffic often rises too. When referral traffic falls, ChatGPT traffic tends to dip as well. This suggests that building strong referral links not only helps with SEO but also improves your chances of being surfaced in AI-powered shopping recommendations.

Marketing takeaway: Actively build referral links so AI has reasons to feature your promotions.

ChatGPT can pull together multiple retailer listings, compare features, and even highlight trade-offs, saving shoppers time and effort when deciding between multiple products.

Marketing takeaway: Make sure your product descriptions and specs are clear, consistent, and up to date so AI has accurate information to work with. Highlight differentiators like warranties, shipping speed, or bundles, since those are the details shoppers will see in side-by-side comparisons.

Not all traffic is created equal. Our data from May 2025 shows a clear difference between visitors coming from Google Search and those coming from ChatGPT.

For every 100 visitors, nearly 7 from ChatGPT completed a purchase compared to fewer than 4 from Google Search. This shows that ChatGPT-driven shoppers are often more decisive and closer to making a purchase by the time they land on your site.

Marketing takeaway for Black Friday: As competition for attention spikes, brands should treat ChatGPT traffic as high-intent.

While the higher conversion rates from ChatGPT traffic are promising, the shift is still in its early stages. Organic search remains a steady and reliable channel for most e-commerce brands. In our analysis of 100 stores, Google Search still drove the majority of traffic and revenue, even as ChatGPT emerged as a meaningful new source. Results will vary across brands and industries, which is why it is important to track your own data. ThoughtMetric makes it easy to monitor these shifts so you can see how they impact your business directly.

Book a ThoughtMetric demo and get visibility into how AI is impacting the customer journey for your brand.

Will ChatGPT replace organic search this Black Friday?
Not yet. Our data across 100 e-commerce brands shows that organic search is still a steady and reliable channel. ChatGPT traffic is growing fast, but it’s still early. Brands should balance both.

Why does referral traffic matter for ChatGPT visibility?
We found a 0.57 correlation between referral traffic and ChatGPT traffic. When referral traffic increases, ChatGPT traffic often rises too. Strong referral links give AI more reasons to feature your brand in its shopping recommendations.

Do ChatGPT shoppers really convert at higher rates?
Yes. In May 2025, ChatGPT traffic converted at 6.7%, compared to 3.9% from Google Search across the same sample of 100 e-commerce brands. ChatGPT-driven shoppers arrive closer to purchase.

What can marketing teams do to prepare for AI-driven shopping?
Focus on three areas: build referral links, make product descriptions and specs clear for side-by-side comparisons, and optimize landing pages for high-intent ChatGPT visitors.

How can ThoughtMetric help?
ThoughtMetric tracks traffic from both ChatGPT and search, so you can see how AI is influencing your funnel and adjust strategy before and during Black Friday.