ChatGPT has emerged as a prime driver of referral visitors to retailers’ web sites, giving firms like Walmart, Goal, Etsy and eBay a recent supply of internet buyers, whereas Amazon has chosen to sit down out.
Information from Similarweb, an online visitors analytics firm, reveals that one in 5 of Walmart’s referral clicks in August got here from ChatGPT, up 15% from July. Different retailers are seeing a carry, too: ChatGPT now drives greater than 20% of referral visitors to Etsy, practically 15% to Goal and 10% to eBay.
To make sure, referral visitors from ChatGPT stays a sliver of the general pie. For Walmart and its friends, referral clicks account for lower than 5% of whole website visits — outweighed by direct visitors, paid channels and engines like google. However the velocity at which ChatGPT has climbed into the highest tier of referral sources reveals how how AI is beginning to affect how customers store on-line. Consumers are more and more clicking by means of hyperlinks inside AI chat responses, pushing main retailers into the purchasing journey traditionally dominated by Google search. The ramifications may very well be large for manufacturers, particularly as platforms like ChatGPT begin enabling checkout.
A new examine authored by OpenAI’s Financial Analysis staff and Harvard economist David Deming discovered that round 2% of all ChatGPT queries contain purchasing — about 50 million queries per day. With 2.5 billion prompts flowing by means of ChatGPT each day, even a small slice interprets into important purchasing intent. Researchers famous that customers are sometimes asking for suggestions like “suggest a superb laptop computer below $1,000” or “How a lot are Nikes,” suggesting AI instruments are taking up a task as soon as reserved for Google. The examine has not but been peer-reviewed.
Individually, practically 60% of U.S. customers have used a generative AI instrument for assist with on-line purchasing, per an August 2025 survey from Omnisend.
“We all know that everybody’s utilizing ChatGPT on a regular basis, and everybody’s utilizing Gemini and all the opposite instruments on a regular basis. In order that must be mirrored within the visitors a bunch of internet sites are getting, and that’s what the info appears to substantiate,” Juozas Kaziukėnas, an unbiased analyst, stated in an interview. He additionally wrote concerning the development in a LinkedIn publish.
Amazon bets on Rufus
The referral surge additionally displays Amazon’s deliberate absence. Not like Walmart, eBay and Goal, Amazon has blocked many AI crawlers from scraping its website, Fashionable Retail beforehand reported. Which means ChatGPT can’t present real-time Amazon product hyperlinks, nudging customers towards rival retailers as an alternative. In August, referral visitors from ChatGPT to Amazon fell practically 18% to lower than 3% month-over-month.
For Amazon, the transfer was defensive. The corporate’s market shouldn’t be solely the biggest retailer of e-commerce information on the earth but in addition the spine of a $56 billion promoting enterprise constructed round buyers shopping its website. Letting exterior AI instruments floor product hyperlinks on to customers would threat bypassing Amazon’s storefront altogether, undermining each visitors and advert income.
As an alternative, Amazon has been laser-focused on rising its personal consumer-facing AI chatbot referred to as Rufus, amongst a myriad of different AI-related investments. Rufus now seems in Amazon’s essential search bar, along with a widget on the backside of the display screen, which opens the bot’s chat interface. Amazon has additionally began populating Rufus’s chatbot interface with advertisements. On the finish of final 12 months, Amazon stated that clients have requested Rufus over half a billion questions, an Amazon spokesperson beforehand informed Fashionable Retail.
Nonetheless, Amazon’s absence has successfully pulled 600 million product listings off the “agentic purchasing shelf,” in accordance with Scot Wingo, creator of the Substack Retailgentic and founding father of ReFiBuy, an organization that helps manufacturers and retailers optimize for agentic AI — a kind of bot that autonomously completes duties by itself, with out human enter. Walmart, with its 420 million SKUs, now fills extra of the floor space inside AI chat outcomes.
Amazon’s stance is notable on condition that main retailers like Walmart and eBay haven’t made any adjustments blocking AI bots from their websites. Like Amazon, Walmart is creating its personal purchasing brokers that clients can use to buy on its e-commerce website. However not like Amazon, Walmart is seemingly open to a future by which customers would possibly depend on third-party bots to buy from its web site. Walmart U.S. Chief Expertise Officer Hari Vasudev informed The Wall Road Journal that he expects the business to finally undertake widespread requirements that may let exterior purchasing brokers work together instantly with retailers’ personal programs.
Kaziukėnas stated that the black-box nature of AI makes it onerous to know precisely how programs determine which retailers to floor, however “it does appear like there’s a desire for trusted main shops,” he stated. “There’s seemingly an inclination to choose form of greater retailers, versus simply selecting any random small Shopify retailer.”
Monetizing AI
For now, retailers are having fun with a surge of free clicks. However that’s unlikely to final. In July, the Monetary Instances reported that OpenAI is engaged on a fee and checkout system inside ChatGPT that may enable customers to finish purchases instantly within the app. If ChatGPT is already driving tens of hundreds of thousands of shopping-related queries a day, the corporate has each incentive to seize worth by means of affiliate charges, promoting or transaction charges, in accordance with Kaziukėnas.
“We at the moment are on this distinctive surroundings in time the place ChatGPT is changing into essential. It’s nonetheless sending a lot of visitors, typically to main retailers. However it will drastically change sooner or later if these items proceed to go within the route they’re going,” Kaziukėnas stated. “This visitors won’t be free sooner or later.” It’s a priority that model executives have repeatedly expressed to Fashionable Retail.
AI firms nonetheless haven’t confirmed how they’ll generate sufficient income to offset the big prices of working the expertise. Bain & Co. initiatives that by 2030, companies would require roughly $2 trillion a 12 months to cowl computing wants, however revenues are anticipated to lag $800 billion.
Businesses are already responding to the shift. Max Sinclair, founding father of Azoma, stated his agency helps manufacturers observe and develop visitors from ChatGPT and Amazon’s Rufus. On common, his clients have seen a sevenfold improve in visits from ChatGPT, Sinclair stated.
“With ChatGPT, it’s very simple to show ROI to our clients, as a result of we are able to say, ‘That is what number of visits you’re attending to your web site earlier than we began working with you. That is what number of you’re getting afterward,” he stated.
As AI has turn out to be extra standard, manufacturers and retailers are working to navigate a possible future the place bots like OpenAI’s Operator store on their behalf with out human intervention. However whether or not or not absolutely autonomous purchasing ever turns into greater than science fiction, the early steps alone are sufficient to reshape how individuals store.
“The affect of AI on purchasing is a spread,” Kaziukėnas stated. “At the beginning of that vary is simply hyperlinks in chat responses, very primary, quite simple. And we’re very near that begin proper now. Perhaps we are going to get to that end level. However even when we don’t, will probably be disruptive by itself.”
