""A singularity change that is happening right now is what Forrester calls the visibility vacuum. As SEO and search decline, customers are going dark, making it impossible to gather buying signals from customers and increasing the need to adopt some form of Answer Engine Optimization.""

"These product efforts, paired with consumer marketing helped drive daily active users and offset headwinds in users coming from search. Search referrals were choppy in the quarter and traffic was more volatile later in the quarter."

"And then with the evolution towards AI overviews, I think more broadly, what we see is 10 blue links has driven tremendous value and growth to the broader ecosystem. From where we sit, AI Overviews has yet to make a similar level of positive impact. And I think that's consistent across the broader landscape, right. Us, businesses, publishers, retailers. But we're still looking for that win-win. But our visibility on search continues to remain low, and we expect it to probably continue to be volatile."

"Over 85% of our traffic comes direct and organically. And in June, that also was over 90%. Meanwhile, less than 0.5% of our traffic came through LLMs, unchanged from 2025."

"Rebranding is the right thing to do long term, but it does have its short-term challenges. But we believe they are transitory. As an example, given the time it takes organic search to index website changes, some customers have had difficulty finding our new store names and that has impacted traffic and unit volumes. We are adjusting as we go and supplementing organic search with targeted paid search efforts."

"Yes, we're seeing some benefit in the way we're managing the LLM searches that are going on out there. Those don't hit websites anymore. So you're trying to counter website traffic and your customer traffic is harder than ever because when people use Claude or ChatGPT to go find a deal on a Camry, it doesn't show up like it used to."

"There's no doubt that the LLMs are playing a part, and we see that shift in search traffic. We've talked about it in the past, and we're continuously improving GoDaddy's services to work better with the LLMs."

"Years ago, people would talk about the fact that SEO had given way to paid advertising. Now over the last 12 or 18 months, AI overviews are giving way to paid advertising. So there's lots of changes. And of course, we also have the rise of the AI platforms in terms of citing without delivering traffic."

"The volumes of traffic from AI platforms is not material. I would also say that's a very common question that's asked of other OTA platforms, and they would echo the same. It's still very nascent. And I think the rules are still being written about how you get cited and how you get traffic. So it's a bit of a watching brief."

"I think most noticeable is how Gemini is being integrated into the experience of search on Google. And so it exposes more people to LLM experiences, which, by churn, obviously impacts the traffic that we're getting. So traffic used to come only from search. Then it became LLMs as well. And now it's becoming hybrids of LLMs and traditional search, which essentially lowers the volume of traffic, which we called out as one of the major headwinds."

"So the organic is actually getting squeezed down, which means that the impact of SEO is going down. And this is why we and probably every other company is making also an investment in GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, to make sure that we are inside those LLMs, and we are. The click-through in LLM in general is obviously smaller than it is on search."

"With Homes.com, we are very prevalent on ChatGPT. I've heard that we are more prevalent than just about anybody else on there for generative optimization. We think actually the experience of the full going into Homes.com and the full AI integration at the UX level is more powerful than a module in ChatGPT."

"However, the story is still, the traffic is not coming from that source. You're still single-digit right now. So it's more of a window dressing than a reality, but we'll keep an eye on it."

"In quarter one, we invested in AI readable content, structured data, and creator ecosystems to drive agentic engine optimization."

"The teams have been really working to ensure all of our content is readable. You know, with LLMs, there's often a lot more words that help kind of describe what people are looking for versus traditional Google search. So the team have been doing a lot of work around AI readability and kind of getting all of that structured in place."

"GEO is here to stay. Customers are going to start there and ask questions. And so we want to make sure that our content is showing up, that we're referenced, and that they can easily connect into our products."

"Unique visitors have been stable at over 9 million a month and 80% of them come direct to Auto Trader. 13% through organic search and 4% through paid web traffic. AI chatbots represent less than 1%, which isn't changing significantly, despite monthly LLM users reaching almost 4 billion globally."

"The traffic from these new AI experiences is less than 1.5% of our total traffic. It's growing fast, but it's small, but it's important to, I would say, overinvest, or maybe you can't overinvest because we don't know how it's going to play out. What we know is we need to experiment. It will change the way travelers interact. It will change the way the company is run, and we need to be on the forefront of that."

"There is no doubt you're seeing a switch from the traditional search metrics to the LLM search metrics. But I think everybody is adapting just like we did to the search when it came out the first time. We're adapting to what terms seem to get picked up, what is the simplicity of the offers you have out there, how do you gear that traffic in."

"It still represents a very small percent of our traffic, like low, low double-digit percent of our traffic. But it's growing quickly, and we want to make sure that we stay at the front of that, just like we say [..] have stayed at the front of Google and anything that's happened with search over time and mobile and apps. And it's a new channel, and we are determined to be the winner in it."

"The AI platforms themselves haven't figured out the revenue model for their free consumers. However, what we are seeing is pretty exciting and positive. I mean, when we look at it relative to other sources, we see a higher conversion rate and a higher propensity to upgrade to our subscription offerings, which means ultimately a higher LTV."

"Tech & Shopping's revenues declined largely due to a drop in web search traffic, which had a meaningful impact on our affiliate commerce revenues."

"Lost search traffic can be and has been made up with other sources of engagement, apps, social traffic, video, programmatic traffic and e-mail. So the degree to which in any of our segments in the Gaming & Entertainment and Health & Wellness segments, in particular, we're able to offset search traffic declines. Where that has become really hard is within Tech & Shopping because the one type of traffic that really is hard to replace as high-intent consumers who arrive via search looking for a product or a service and then clicking through to make a purchase."

"Even as the AI overviews and AI-enabled answer the optimization engines or GEOs are gaining scale. We actually think of them as a new organic channel for brand messaging and awareness. We're investing in AI marketing capabilities internally, but continue to strengthen where we are with those efforts. In fact, we believe that we are very well positioned to take advantage of this change in how people search, because we've been known to create high-quality content and expertise across multiple different categories that we operate in. So I think with new opportunities with answer engines and AI overviews, we actually are using them to drive some of that message home."

"We continue to drive increased consumer awareness through our paid media strategies, search optimization, partnerships and scaling brand recognition."

"In the fourth quarter, general purpose LLMs drove an increasing percentage of traffic and checkouts as we continue to expand this new and growing channel."

"We actually have people who just are working through LLM search strategies so that we do appear on whether it's Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT."

"And we track it also, by the way. So we have seen this go up month to month to month. People who are finding us on the other LLMs, the number of people, it continues to increase month-to-month. So one, that's what we're doing on the SEO, very comfortable about where we are relative to that strategy."

"Our strategy is simple, automate what can be automated and then win through deep expertise and high-touch service where it matters most. AI can help you start. LegalZoom helps you get it done. Today, more customers are starting with AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, getting information, document reviews and insights while increasingly trying to complete complex tasks."

"The trend should look no different and look no different than what you're seeing overall in the general market. You're seeing less and less traffic ,and quality traffic, come through traditional search engines and more and more coming from AI queries. And we're seeing that as well, and we're actually taking advantage of that as what we see as a key opportunity into 2026 and 2027."

"While still a very small part of our overall traffic in GMS, agentic traffic to Etsy in Q4 was about 15x what it was last year, underscoring just how rapidly this channel is emerging. Early indicators support our hypothesis that agentic discovery can be additive to our ecosystem. Using ChatGPT as an example, we're seeing evidence that in addition to bringing new buyers to Etsy, a meaningful share of buyers engaging through ChatGPT have a prior relationship with us — including lapsed buyers — indicating that agentic shopping could be a great unlock for retention and better lifetime value. Orders originating from ChatGPT also tend to skew higher value compared to some of our more mature acquisition channels. And in addition to instant checkout sales, we're seeing strong engagement with listings on Etsy resulting from ChatGPT discovery."

"We're also leading automotive marketplace competitors in the emerging AI-driven discovery landscape. While AI remains a small share of overall traffic today, in Q4, CarGurus generated more AI-driven traffic than our closest competitors, and these users convert at higher rates, submitting leads at nearly 50% higher rates than traditional SEO in Q4. To date, AI traffic has been additive to our overall acquisition mix, increasing visibility rather than displacing existing channels. AI is reshaping discovery across many categories. In automotive, the shift has been more measured."

"On the non-paid side, we have strengthened and will continue to evolve technical platform best practices and scaling proprietary content so it is discoverable across LLM environments — not just traditional organic search."

"We are sharing our data with LLMs in a controlled way. We're giving them access to certain data, not all data."

"We continue to focus on improving our paid marketing efficiencies as well as bringing more of the repeat customers back. SEO has been a headwind for several years now industry-wide. We continue to see declines in the organic traffic, but our focus is on continuing to build the other 2 parts of the marketing engine through the investments that we have outlined earlier [paid and lifecycle marketing]."

"To your question on AI, I will tell you right now that the traffic is very small, and it's not just for us, like in general, there's not a lot of traffic being driven. The traffic that is being driven is high intent, and so we are seeing kind of high conversion on that in terms of the traffic that's there."

"As general purpose LLMs increasingly create new top-of-funnel entry points for travel and generative AI drives increased global online participation and spend, our proactive engagement with major technology and AI players is positioning us to meet whatever level of demand ultimately migrates from traditional search firms to horizontal LLMs."

"Historically, I would say, for over 20 years, it kind of stays the same, right? People go to Google, they type "Holiday for four in Mallorca", and thanks to SEM ads or SEO, free positioning, companies like us, they show us at the top. We're seeing a shift, from even if, you know, typing keywords into a, into a bar is still the vast majority of searches. Of course, people are having more conversations with chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini by Google."

"So there's new traffic sources emerging. OpenAI and ChatGPT are the obvious ones."

"We continue to hold a unique position in this space despite ongoing declines in flyby visitors to our site due to the changing search landscape and the rise of AI overviews. Last year, a stable base of travelers shared nearly 80 million contributions on Tripadvisor, impressive and consistent volumes despite the traffic headwinds we've endured."

"As a result, our current expectations are for mid-to-high-teens revenue declines, largely driven by SEO traffic headwinds and our focus on maintaining consistent ROIs in the paid channels within hotel meta."

"And what we're seeing is that as AI traffic comes in, it tends to be higher intent."

"That traffic that we're driving through that AI-first approach is a lower relative percentage of our overall traffic, but it's growing much, much faster, and we're pretty excited about what we can do there."

"The journalists and the independent newsrooms we work with have been struggling with plummeting search traffic, rising product costs, increased competition from content creators and declining revenue. They have been urging us to provide more support in areas like AI adoption, content monetisation, and legal assistance."

"Look, we're not seeing material changes right now [regarding traffic from Google]."

"We're making sure that our brands show up well, as I said, through many ways, whether it's answer engine optimization, native integrations, agentic browsers. I actually think that AI search opens up even more possibilities to reach more travelers."

"What we see is that traffic that comes from chatbots converts at a higher rate than traffic that comes from Google."

"So I think that for chatbots or AI companies to win, we don't need to live in a world where everyone else has to lose. I don't think that one company is going to own everything. I think we're going to be able to work together. And these companies will be very helpful top-of-funnel traffic generators for Airbnb, just like Google."

"In fact, since January 2025, orders coming to Shopify stores from AI search are up 15X. Now that's on a small base, but that's still a really big jump in 12 months."

"At the same time, marketing is going through the biggest shift we have seen in decades. Search traffic is declining as AI-generated answers become the starting point for product and brand discovery."

"We're going to assume Google SEO stays down at that lower level for the year."

"So on SEO, we're currently at around 7% of SRs, leads revenue is coming through SEO."

"As we lose SEO and we lean into our paid channels where we're effective, we have seen an increase in marketing as a percent of revenue just as you follow through the year."

"On the top of funnel question on SEO and GEO. I think, we actually have seen some very, very good initial yields on the GEO side, but it's super early days. These are very, very new channels for everyone. And I also think there's some interplay still between SEO and GEO. So we feel really confident and positive about what we're seeing from a signal point of view on that side of the house, but it's also very early days."

"On SEO and AIO, what I'd tell you is, first, the negative impact has stepped down modestly, but we haven't seen a return to prior levels."

"As we have expressed, changes in search interfaces continue to impact our traffic. Yet despite these changes, the quality and accuracy of our services continues to drive high retention rates."

"I think what you're seeing more broadly is that we get a different type of traffic from the LLMs than you would have historically seen from search. And so you see higher intent on traffic coming through from the LLMs."

"Realtor continued to gain audience share with visits to its properties reaching 29% of total visits to all real estate portals in quarter two — more than triple that of homes.com and double that of Redfin, while narrowing the gap versus Zillow. These strong outcomes are a result of the improvements in SEO as well as continued product enhancements and a successful brand campaign."

"And we are seeing pretty good progress in GEO. We don't have much by way of SEO. We deemphasized that years ago. And so the SEO, our SEO has actually been fairly stable, not declining in any kind of significant rates, but it's not material anyway."

"The biggest contributor to that is a 50% drop in Google search referrals over the last 2 years. This quarter, we also saw a little softness in non-search traffic sources, mainly driven by declines in Google Discover, which is their version of Apple News, which had been a contributor to non-search growth earlier in the year."

"The factors affecting Q4 digital revenue are unchanged from those outlined in our Q3 trading update. These include a material reduction in Google referral volumes, alongside continued macroeconomic weakness."