AI Shopping Skyrockets: BrightEdge Data Crowns 2025 The First AI-Driven Ecommerce Holiday Season

752% YoY surge in AI referrals signals major shift in how consumers discover products

San Mateo, Calif., Nov. 18, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BrightEdge, the global leader in AI-driven organic search, content, and digital marketing automation, today released new findings from BrightEdge AI Market Pulse, the industry’s leading resource for measuring AI-driven discovery trends. The data confirms that the 2025 holiday season is already at a turning point for ecommerce with direct referrals from AI engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity to leading ecommerce brands exploding by 752% year-over-year. Now a mainstream driver of shopping behavior, AI is fundamentally redefining how consumers research and discover products.

Key Findings Across Ecommerce Verticals
As the platform trusted by over half of the Fortune 500, BrightEdge is uniquely positioned to reveal how AI features are surfacing across both traditional search (Google, Bing, etc.) and AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.) in major retail categories. The expanding footprint of AI, especially in the discovery phase, reflects a broader shift in consumer behavior and how people explore products and make decisions before ever reaching a brand’s website. For example, AI presence in Google search results has increased significantly year-over-year in the following ecommerce categories:

• Grocery: This category saw the most dramatic shift, with a 900% increase in AI Overview presence. Consumers are turning to AI for recipe planning and pantry management, driving substantial volume growth for everyday essentials.
• Furniture: AI is also simplifying decision paralysis for high-ticket items like large furnishings, driving a 375% increase in AI presence, as users leverage AI to configure complex layouts and style bundles before moving to purchase.
• Electronics: AI search assistants are being utilized to compare complex specifications, with the category seeing 257% growth. This confirms that AI summaries are highly effective for evaluating feature parity and review analysis for major purchases.
• Apparel: The fashion segment experienced 104% growth in AI presence. This initial growth points to rising consumer reliance on personalized styling and fit recommendations to make quick purchase decisions.

"Our latest analysis confirms consumers are increasingly using AI across different stages of the buying journey,” said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. “As AI improves and more people trust it to help them choose gifts for the holidays, the next steps, like assisting with big-ticket items or even managing the whole order from start to finish, aren’t far behind. This may be the first year where AI truly becomes part of the shopping experience, from inspiration to checkout.”

Google Still Dominates Digital Shopping
Despite this explosive year-over-year growth, referrals from AI engines still remain a small portion of the overall commerce landscape. BrightEdge’s analysis found that such referrals currently make up less than 1% of all organic ecommerce traffic. By comparison, Google still drives 87.6% of all organic search traffic to ecommerce brand websites.

Optimize Once, Win Everywhere
The emergence of AI as a major referral source in the holiday season creates renewed urgency for marketers to optimize across both traditional and AI search. While SEO remains the highest volume channel for success, the foundation for winning in AI is being built on existing high-quality, authoritative content. As AI traffic expands and fragments across multiple platforms like Google’s AI Overviews, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, and more, marketers must maintain both traditional SEO and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) strategies.

With the help of technology like BrightEdge’s fully unified platform, retailers have the ability to orchestrate every touchpoint in the shopper journey, from AI assistants to search engines to onsite experiences, driving discovery, conversions and revenue.

To stay tuned to month-by-month breakdowns of how search giants are competing, visit BrightEdge’s AI Market Pulse.

About BrightEdge
BrightEdge is the global leader in Enterprise SEO and AI-powered content performance. For more than 18 years, BrightEdge has helped thousands of brands and digital marketers, including 57% of the Fortune 500, transform online opportunities into measurable business results. Its industry-first platform integrates the most comprehensive dataset in search, combining insights from traditional SEO, digital media, social, and content with cutting-edge generative AI capabilities, including its deep learning engine DataMind and AI Catalyst platform. Trusted by enterprises, mid-market companies, and leading digital agencies, BrightEdge continues to set the standard for innovation in search and AI, enabling brands to win by becoming an integral part of the digital experience.

Contact: press@brightedge.com

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