Does AI send shoppers to your website?

How much will AI traffic to retail sites grow?

Fast, according to Adobe's forecast.

Adobe expects AI traffic to US retail sites this holiday season to rise 130% year over year, measured by shoppers clicking on a link. The forecast rests on Adobe Analytics data covering over 1 trillion visits to US retail sites. Since Adobe's 130% is a growth rate, it shows the direction and speed, not the size of today's AI traffic.

The same Adobe release includes a consumer survey of 5,000 people fielded in July 2026. Adobe found that 77% of respondents who have used AI for online shopping report feeling more confident in their purchase.

How many shoppers ask AI for ideas?

Nearly half do it regularly.

Optimove surveyed 648 US consumers in households earning at least $75,000 and found that 49% regularly consult AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for shopping ideas or gift recommendations, and another 23% do so occasionally. The sample is narrower than all US shoppers, but it shows how common the habit has become among people with money to spend.

From a wider angle, the 2026 Holiday Shopping Report from Narvar found that 65% of consumers plan to use AI for at least one part of their holiday shopping this year, with 43% planning to use it for gift discovery.

Are shoppers open to new brands?

Many say they are.

Optimove found that 47% of consumers plan to explore new brands this holiday season. For a store, that means a large group is open to names it has not seen before, and an assistant's answer is one place where those names come from.

Will shoppers trust what the assistant tells them?

For recommendations, more than for purchases.

In its 2026 Holiday Retail Survey of 4,000 US consumers, Deloitte found that 39% of respondents asked about gen AI say gen AI is their primary tool for at least one holiday shopping task, that 29% would try an unknown retailer based on a gen AI recommendation and that only 16% would trust it to complete a purchase with their permission. Shoppers use AI to decide where to look, then finish the purchase on a store's own site, which is where the click lands.

Are retailers ready for this traffic?

Few say so.

In a survey of 100 retail decision-makers alongside the 1,348 consumers, Narvar found that only 8% of retailers describe themselves as very confident in using AI to improve the shopping experience.

What should a store check first?

Start with what the assistants say before you change any page.

1. Step 1Write your shoppers' questions. List what people ask before they know your name, such as gift ideas for a type of buyer or how two kinds of products compare, without your brand in them.
2. Step 2Ask several assistants. Put each question to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity in a fresh conversation.
3. Step 3Record who is named. Note which stores each answer recommends, which it only mentions and whether yours appears.
4. Step 4Check what is said about you. Compare the descriptions, prices, shipping and return terms in the answers with your own pages and mark anything wrong or outdated.
5. Step 5Note the sources behind the answers. Write down which pages and reviews the assistants cite when they name another store.
6. Step 6Fix the sources, then ask again. Correct your own pages and the public profiles the answers rely on, then repeat the same questions to see whether the answers changed.

How does EntityRise measure what assistants say about a company?

EntityRise is an AI visibility audit for agencies and companies that shows how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity describe and recommend a company and what to improve first.

Each audit asks up to 40 buyer questions: you mark 15 as high priority and they go to all five assistants, and up to 25 more are each asked on one assistant, for up to 100 answers kept with their sources. The AI Visibility Index weighs recommendation at 30%, mention at 20%, prominence at 20%, citation support at 15% and description accuracy at 15%, so it measures both whether you are named and whether what is said about you is right.

The result is a PDF report of around 40 pages with the analysis assistant by assistant, your main competitors compared area by area and an ordered list of what to improve. After the audit, Ask EntityRise, a chat inside the dashboard, answers questions about your results from the audit's own evidence. You can start the audit, and agencies can run it for clients under their own name.