Keep pulling the thread on Ethan Smith.
Webflow observed that leads from LLM traffic converted at a rate 6 times higher than leads from Google search traffic.
The current shift in search due to AI is the second biggest change in the history of SEO, following the introduction of anti-spam algorithms like Panda.
To win a top answer spot in an LLM, a brand needs to be mentioned as many times as possible across all citations, unlike Google where a single top-ranking link can win.
Unlike traditional SEO, early-stage companies can win quickly at Answer Engine Optimization because they can get mentioned in new citations like Reddit threads or YouTube videos and appear in answers almost immediately.
Reddit is one of the most heavily cited sources in LLMs, making Reddit optimization a top priority for companies pursuing AEO.
Webflow now gets 8% of its signups from LLMs, making it one of the company's top acquisition channels.
An analysis of Common Crawl data shows there is now more AI-generated content on the internet than human-generated content.
The rise of new search and answer platforms like TikTok and LLMs expands the overall market for search rather than taking market share from Google.
User behavior is shifting from traditional search engines like Google to LLM-based answer engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity for information retrieval.
Referral traffic from LLMs like ChatGPT began to increase significantly around January 2024 because the answers became more clickable with features like maps and shopping carousels.
For Webflow, the most effective Answer Engine Optimization tactics were traditional SEO, creating YouTube videos, and Reddit optimization.
The average user query length in chat-based answer engines is around 25 words, compared to approximately six words on Google, indicating a larger 'long tail' of specific questions.