Traffic jam?

Traffic from generative AI-powered links to retail websites has surged in recent months, up 4,700% in July, according to the latest data from Adobe.

“We’re seeing the momentum increase each month; we’re seeing the growth continue to scale,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, told us. The surge, Pandya added, is being driven by consumer trust in the links shared by generative AI-powered platforms like Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, among others being tracked by Adobe.

“We also ran a survey—in addition to the Adobe analytics platform data that’s informing the traffic spikes that we’re observing—and there, the consumers are saying that they really trust the links we see,” he said. “More than 90% of them trust the responses they’re given from these LLM [large language models] and that’s what’s really driving the surge.”

Adobe, which analyzed chat services and AI-powered browser experiences, spotted the first big wave of generative AI-driven traffic to US retail sites during the holiday season. In 2024, from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, clicks from AI sources jumped 1,300% YoY—and on Cyber Monday alone, visits spiked 1,950%. While still small compared with channels like paid search or email, the surge marks a significant shift.