Survey: 57.5% of consumers say AI chats talked them out of a purchase
IgorCarron · x · 2026-10-22
A survey of 2,338 US consumers by Semrush's Exploding Topics found roughly 57.5% say conversations with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini convinced them not to buy something — brands can win on Google yet lose the customer at the AI-recommendation stage.
The author uses the data to promote a free "AEO audit" service: asking buyer questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, then delivering a two-page report on where the brand is named, who gets named instead, and the top five fixes. The sample audit shows a company named in only 5 of 21 buying answers and absent from all 18 early-stage research answers. Useful data for SEO/brand folks eyeing AI search, though the thread doubles as a funnel for the service.
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