Conductor's 2026 AEO/GEO benchmarks: a fully-sourced reference

This is a fully-sourced reference to Conductor's 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report, described as the first large-scale industry analysis of how AI-powered discovery reshapes brand visibility. The headline figures: AI referral traffic is about 1.08% of all website traffic, ChatGPT drives ~87.4% of that referred traffic, and Google AI Overviews appear in ~25% of searches. This page collects the report's numbers, each tied to its source.

Last reviewed: 27 June 2026. All figures below are from Conductor's 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report, first published 13 November 2025 and last updated by Conductor in April 2026. The figures were verified against Conductor's own report page and corroborated across independent coverage (Business Wire, The AI Journal, and multiple secondary analyses). It is a single-vendor dataset, so treat the direction as firmer than any single number, and attribute anything you quote to "Conductor, 2026."

What did Conductor analyse?

The report's scale is what makes it useful as a benchmark. Conductor's stated methodology:

The takeaway: this is one of the largest public datasets on AI visibility to date, which is what makes its benchmarks worth referencing, while remembering they reflect Conductor's enterprise-domain sample, not the whole web.

How much traffic does AI actually refer?

Conductor's most-cited finding is that AI referral traffic is still a small slice of the whole, but growing and very uneven by sector:

The 1.08% figure is easy to dismiss as trivial, but two things make it matter: it is compounding monthly, and, because AI answers are often zero-click. Referred visits undercount AI's real influence on a buying decision. Much of AI's impact shows up as brand awareness and shortlisting that never registers as a click, which is why Conductor's own advice is to measure citations and mentions, not just referrals. We make the same case in from clicks to citations.

How prevalent are Google AI Overviews?

Across the 21.9 million Google searches Conductor analysed, about one in four returned an AI Overview:

The ~25% average sits in the same range as other mid-2026 estimates (Google's own and third-party trackers have put AI Overview prevalence between roughly 16% and 25%, depending on query mix and date). The sector spread is the more actionable point: in Healthcare nearly half of searches surface an AI summary, so the AI Overview optimisation stakes are far higher there than in Real Estate.

Who wins the citations?

Conductor reports that within several industries, third-party publishers and marketplaces, not the brands themselves. Capture the largest citation shares:

In Financials, in other words, a publisher like NerdWallet is winning more AI citations than many traditional banks. This is the same dynamic behind why AI loves listicles: for category questions, engines lean on neutral-looking marketplaces and review publishers over brand-owned pages. The strategic implication is earned placement in those sources, not just optimising your own site.

"AI isn't just adding another search surface. It's deciding which brands the world sees first.". Conductor, 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report

How should you use these benchmarks?

Treat this as a dated benchmark, not a target. Every number here is Conductor's own, drawn from an enterprise-domain sample over a defined window, so cite Conductor and the date when you reuse one, and hedge as "as of the 2026 report." Because live retrieval favours recently-updated pages, we keep references like this on a refresh cadence and update figures substantively as new editions land. Conductor's report is also published in per-industry cuts, so the sector benchmark that matters most is the one for your industry, not the cross-industry average.

The one figure that ultimately matters is your own: whether the engines surface, cite, and recommend your brand for the questions your customers ask. Measured over time, across engines, against your category benchmark. That is precisely what Buffy Intel is built to measure, turning industry benchmarks like Conductor's into a read on your actual share of voice.