The list of online retailers getting the most help from artificial intelligence (AI) traffic playing the biggest roles in sending that traffic are evolving as well<\/p>\n
In July alone, Adobe Analytics showed AI-associated referral traffic to ecommerce sites rising by 62% year over year. In addition, Adobe observed shoppers referred by AI tools generated 53% more revenue per visit than other shoppers<\/p>\n
Though the overall volume of these referrals has not yet overtaken referrals from traditional search engines, conversion is an area that holds potential to set AI traffic segments apart for merchants. New findings based on AI Commerce Rankings data from Digital Commerce 360 and ReFiBuy offer a glimpse into which large language models (LLMs) account for their largest shares of AI traffic to online retailers from the Top 1000 Database. That market research tool ranks online retailers in North America by annual web sales.<\/p>\n
Comparisons between traffic levels from Q1 and Q2 in 2026 highlighted renewed competition for OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT \u2014 particularly from Anthropic\u2019s Claude, which just this week announced new Claude agents for ecommerce<\/p>\n
Breaking down the changes among top AI traffic referral veral key changes when assessing which platforms were sending the most traffic to specific merchants<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that moved, for example, is in Q1, 844 retailers had ChatGPT as No. 1,\u201d said Scot Wingo, the founder and CEO at ReFiBuy. \u201cThat decreased to 722 [in Q2].\u201d<\/p>\n
That shift occurred as other AI platforms achieved gains<\/p>\n
\u201cReplacing that was a combination of the folks behind,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo, [Google] Gemini went from 16 \u2014 being the top for 16 retailers \u2014 to 32.\u201d<\/p>\n
Essentially, the number of retailers tracked in the AI Commerce Rankings that relied most on Gemini among AI traffic<\/p>\n
Among those on the rise were Perplexity and Claude. Perplexity gained 12 more online retailers looking to it as their top AI traffic challenge OpenAI and Google\u2019s products<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly<\/a> one retailer had Claude as their top source of traffic [in Q1], and now there\u2019s 15,\u201d said Wingo. \u201cThat\u2019s a really big move.\u201d<\/p>\n As Wingo pointed out, Anthropic implemented product cards for shoppable recommendations in Claude. While Claude did not make early efforts in 2025, as both OpenAI and Google did, to integrate checkout (efforts that have largely been rethought, with agentic commerce experiences flowing through retailer-specific apps), Anthropic did experiment internally with an agentic marketplace in something it called Project Deal.<\/p>\n More recently, it announced an expanded partnership with Salesforce to create Claudeforce for Salesforce users. Then, it also announced its new digital blueprints for commerce-targeted agents<\/p>\n In the meantime, Claude\u2019s rise among referral those commerce-associated efforts advance<\/p>\n \u201cIf that continues over eight quarters, they\u2019re gonna be in the hunt for up there with Gemini and ChatGPT,\u201d Wingo stated<\/p>\n \ud83d\udce7 Editor\u2019s note: Subscribe to our retail newsletter\u00a0to make sure you see each weekly edition of\u00a0Ecommerce Trends<\/p>\n Submit your data\u00a0and we\u2019ll see where you fit in our next ranking update<\/p>\n Stay on top of the latest developments in the\u00a0online retail\u00a0industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to\u00a0Digital Commerce 360 Retail News.\u00a0Follow us on\u00a0LinkedIn,\u00a0TikTok,\u00a0X (formerly Twitter),\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and\u00a0YouTube. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content<\/p>\n Favorite<\/p>\n \n Related:<\/strong> \n <a href="https:\/\/yoursite.com\/automation-africa\/" title="WhatsApp<\/a> Marketing Automation Africa: 6 Dangerous Mistakes Brands Make in Nigeria”> Join Justfine Infotech<\/strong> and build real digital skills in AI, automation, web development, digital marketing, office productivity, e-commerce, freelancing and cybersecurity.<\/p>\n Available Programmes:<\/strong> WhatsApp:<\/strong>Do you rank in our databases?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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