Industrials Industry: 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks

*This data comes from the 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report. To explore insights across all 10 industries, access the full report here.

Executive summary

There’s a new search experience for brands to prioritize: AI answer engines.

The rise of AI answer engines and Google’s integration of AI Overview (AIO) results directly onto traditional SERPs means users are increasingly getting answers from AI-generated summaries directly rather than clicking a link, leading to a surge in zero-click searches.

While organic search still fuels the majority of discovery, AI has introduced what we’re calling a parallel surface of visibility—an invisible layer that determines which brands are seen before anyone clicks.

The data shows that AI referral traffic currently represents just over 1% of total web visits and is growing by roughly 1% each month, on average. It will never rival traditional organic search traffic—but that’s not the point. In this new model, visibility no longer begins on your website; it starts within the AI experiences that answer questions, guide intent, and shape perception in real time. If your brand isn’t cited, mentioned, or referenced in these AI answers, it’s effectively absent from the modern customer journey.

AI visibility is becoming its own performance channel, one that signals which brands are trusted enough to enter the answer. Winning in this space isn’t about clicks; it’s about credibility.

The following findings provide the first layer of industry-specific benchmark data essential for navigating the new search landscape and ensuring credibility (and visibility) of your brand. It moves beyond traditional website analytics to provide key context for evaluating your total search performance, identifying accurate KPIs for both organic and AIO, and implementing the right strategies to drive results.

Top takeaways for Industrials

• AEO, GEO & AI Search benchmarks:
  • The Industrials sector sees 1.25% of its website traffic from AI referrals, indicating solid adoption of AI for complex B2B queries.
  • Market share in answer engines is highly segmented, with deloitte.com (9.78%) leading the commercial & professional services subindustry, fedex.com (17.20%) pacing the transportation subindustry, and siemens.com (8.80%) heading the capital goods subindustry.
  • ChatGPT is the dominant source of AI referral traffic, accounting for 87.5% of clicks. Perplexity and Copilot also have a notable presence.
• AIO benchmarks:
  • AI Overviews (AIOs) appear for 18.8% of page-one Google queries in this sector, right around the cross-industry average.
  • Blog content was by far the most cited page source in AI Overviews, with over 100,000 pages being cited in the result.
  • Indeed.com (1.41%) accounted for the most AIO share of voice across the entire Industrials industry.

Methodology

Using Conductor, we analyzed 13,770 domains from leading brands. Each domain was categorized into 10 industries and then further segmented into 22 subindustries to provide additional insights, which map directly to the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) framework. This research identifies emerging traffic trends, separating traditional organic traffic from new AI referral patterns and zero-click visibility at a granular level.

For the purposes of this industry-specific report, the Industrials industry was split into three subindustries:

• Capital goods
• Commercial & professional services
• Transportation

AI search methodology

The AI search market share and brand leaders are sourced from our analysis of 13,770 domains being cited against our index of 3.5 million unique prompts between May and September 2025. We focused on these domains as they aligned with the 10 GICS industry categories we are reporting on. The analysis included 17 million AI-generated responses and over 100 million citations sourced from our AI Search Performance (AISP) and AIO reporting index.

The findings on AI search traffic, organic Google traffic, and referral traffic by answer engine type were sourced by analyzing anonymized and aggregated traffic patterns across 1,215 of our enterprise customer domains to assess how users of answer engines are reaching websites.

Ultimately, we analyzed more than 3.3 billion sessions across all of our data sources. Of that traffic, AI traffic from LLMs and chatbots accounted for more than 35.7 million sessions across the 10 industries analyzed.

The following benchmarks are averages sourced from an analysis of monthly AI search traffic data in the U.S. over a five-month period (May 2025-September 2025) in Conductor.

AI Overview methodology

We analyzed AI Overview data in the U.S. over a four-week period from September 15 to October 12, 2025, to gain insight into how AI-powered search is affecting Google’s traditional search experience. To do so, we analyzed approximately 21.9 million unique Google searches from Conductor’s traditional search index. Of those Google searches, nearly 5.5 million generated an AIO result.

AEO & AI search visibility analysis for Industrials

This analysis provides a granular, data-driven benchmark for true visibility in the AI search landscape.

This section focuses on:

• AI referral traffic by subindustry
• Month-over-month (MoM) growth
• AI referral traffic by answer engine
• AI vs. Traditional channels
• AI market share

AI referral traffic for the Industrials industry

The results:

• AI referral traffic accounts for 1.25% of all website traffic for the Industrials industry.
  • AI referral traffic usually has high intent and is more likely to convert than traffic from traditional channels. That shift means that AI search visibility is becoming the new key currency for enterprise AEO.
• The Industrials (1.25%) industry had above-average AI referral traffic out of the 10 analyzed industries.

While AI referral traffic remains small in volume, its impact on visibility is outsized. That 1.25% of AI referral traffic represents millions of interactions happening before a user visits a website. These moments decide which Industrials brands show up in the new customer journey—and which are invisible.

AI referral traffic by Industrials subindustries

The results:

• 1.62% of traffic from queries related to transportation comes from AI.
• The capital goods (1.50%) subindustry was also above average in terms of AI referral traffic.
• While below the other subindustries, the commercial & professional services subindustry still saw a strong 1.09% of traffic come from AI.

Month-over-month growth in AI referral traffic change

The results:

• AI referral traffic in the Industrials industry fell .13% from May to September 2025.
• The rate of month-over-month growth decreased by -.22% over the last 2 months.
• Before that decline, the rate of month-over-month growth in the Industrials industry grew .09% from May to July 2025.

This decrease could be caused by a number of factors, but one possibility is that the AI is now good enough to answer many of these more complex questions directly, thus slowing down the rate at which it sends referral traffic compared to earlier months.

AI referral traffic vs. Traditional SEO traffic benchmarks for Industrials

The results:

• Established channels like organic search, paid, direct, social, and any other referral traffic aside from AI still drive the vast majority of website visits across all industries.
  • AI traffic made up just 1.25% of all traffic in the Industrials industry.
• Google makes up 33.85%, and other traffic sources contribute over 64.90%.

This significant organic traffic benchmark for Industrials (33.85%) underscores the continued importance of a strong traditional SEO strategy. Even as AI search grows, optimizing for visibility in standard Google results is essential for improving brand visibility and relevance. This potential overlap reinforces the need for a dual approach of traditional SEO and AEO / GEO strategies.

AI referral traffic by answer engine source: Industrials industry

The results:

• On average, ChatGPT drives 87.5% of all AI referral traffic in the Industrials industry.
• Perplexity drove 5.1% of AI traffic to the Industrials industry.

That said, while ChatGPT is the engine you should prioritize, it’s not the only answer engine you should pay attention to. Copilot and Perplexity, in particular, are driving notable traffic and could continue to expand their influence. Prepare for future volatility by tracking your brand presence across all of these answer engines and then optimizing as needed if your mentions and citations drop.

Industrials market share: Domain citations and brand mention leaders

This section is our analysis of the brands and domains that won the most market share in the Industrials space. Our analysis was based on AI citations and brand mentions for May through September 2025. The results are split across three key Industrials subindustries:

• Capital goods
• Commercial & professional services
• Transportation

Industrials industry: Top 5 domains by AI citation market share

1. deloitte.com
2. indeed.com
3. mckinsey.com
4. wolterskluwer.com
5. siemens.com

The Industrials sector is dominated by B2B and professional services content. deloitte.com and mckinsey.com lead because AI models see them as authorities, citing their extensive thought leadership, white papers, and complex industry analysis. The high ranking of indeed.com also shows that a significant volume of queries in this sector is career- and job-related.

Industrials industry: Top 5 brand leaders by AI brand mention market share

1. Deloitte
2. Amazon Web Services
3. Siemens
4. ADP
5. McKinsey

Deloitte's brand authority is even stronger than its domain data, solidifying its #1 position. The most significant insight is the appearance of Amazon Web Services (AWS). This indicates that AI-driven conversations about the industrial sector are inextricably linked to digital transformation, cloud infrastructure, and data—all core AWS offerings.

Capital goods subindustry market share leaders by domain citations

Below, we have the top five domains in the capital goods subindustry based on their share of domain citations in AI search.

This subindustry list shows a significant divergence from the overall Industrials leaders (like deloitte.com and indeed.com). Siemens (8.80%) is the only domain reflected in both leader lists, and it jumps from #5 to #1, while the rest of the list (Liebherr, BraunAbility, NI, Bell) is entirely new. This signals that for complex queries about manufacturing, engineering, and heavy equipment, AI models bypass general B2B thought leadership and cite these specialized manufacturers as the primary technical authorities.

Commercial & professional services subindustry market share leaders by domain citations

This subindustry list is nearly identical to the overall Industrials industry leaders, with deloitte.com (9.78%), indeed.com (3.38%), and mckinsey.com (3.16%) holding the top spots in both. This confirms that the commercial & professional services subindustry is the dominant driver of AI citations for the entire Industrials category. The appearance of ADP (2.02%) reinforces that AI models rely on these large B2B service firms for authoritative content on consulting, employment, and HR.

Transportation subindustry market share leaders by domain citations

The domains are divided between logistics carriers like fedex.com (17.20%) and consumer-facing travel platforms like tripadvisor.com (16.71%). This indicates that for transportation queries, AI models bypass B2B consulting content and go directly to the primary carriers and travel aggregators for the most relevant, real-world information.

AI Overview benchmarks for Industrials

Despite the rise of AI answer engines, billions of searches still happen on Google, and every day, AI Overviews are appearing for more of those searches. That means it’s essential for brands to optimize their site to rank on page 1 in Google and increase their chances of winning an AIO result.

Below is our analysis of the AIO visibility in the Industrials industry.

AIO visibility analysis: Industrials industry

The results:

• AIO results appeared for 18.8% of all Google queries in the Industrials industry.

AIO visibility analysis: Industrials subindustries

The results:

• More than 18% of all industrial queries trigger an AI Overview in Google.
  • If you’re in the Industrials space, you need to find a way to win AIO results or risk disappearing from almost 20% of queries.
• Commercial & professional services (23.2%) searches trigger an AIO result most often out of all Industrials subindustries searches.
• Capital goods (8.8%) had the lowest share of AI Overviews among all Industrials subindustries.

This makes sense since industrial queries are usually complex, multi-faceted, and informational, which is the exact use case AIO was made for, synthesizing complex information into a digestible summary.

It’s also interesting to note that the presence of AI overviews is significant for all three subindustries, but the commercial & professional services queries trigger significantly more AI Overviews. This aligns with our findings from earlier that commercial & professional services queries drove the most AI traffic of all the Industrials subindustries.

Page types cited most often in AIO results for Industrials

The results:

• Blog content was by far the most cited page source in AI Overviews, with over 100,000 pages being cited in the result.
• The next closest page type in AIO results was an article page with just over 53,000 citations.

The key takeaway here is that your content is much more likely to appear in AIO results for industrial queries if it is structured as blog content. AI Overviews prioritize timely, authoritative news for broad trends and current events for the Industrials sector. When it comes to more specific "how-to," process-related, or expertise-driven questions, AI appears to favor the practical, well-structured, and frequently updated content often found on industry blogs over potentially more static or less parseable "article" pages.

Industrials AIO share of voice winners by subindustry

The following tables show the top 5 domains that were cited most often in an AI overview across the capital goods, commercial & professional services, and transportation subindustries.

Capital goods subindustry: Winning domains for AIO share of voice

The results:

• Grainger (.04%), Siemens (.04%), and Xometry (.04%) are in a three-way tie for the top AIO share of voice.
• RS (.03%) and Procore (.03%) follow immediately behind.

The market share in this subindustry is incredibly fragmented, with leaders capturing only fractions of a percent. This list is composed of highly specialized B2B domains, from MRO suppliers (Grainger) to industrial automation (Siemens) and on-demand manufacturing (Xometry). This signals that for complex, technical "Capital Goods" queries, AIOs are citing a very wide array of niche authorities rather than one dominant player.

Commercial & Professional Services subindustry: Winning domains for AIO share of voice

The results:

• Indeed (1.41%) is the clear leader in AIO share for this subindustry.
• J.D. Power (.57%) and Healthgrades (.50%) take the next two spots.

This list is dominated by large-scale employment and review platforms. The strong performance of Indeed shows that a massive volume of commercial & professional services AIO queries are job-related. The high rank of J.D. Power and Healthgrades is also key, indicating that AIOs are trained to rely on these major third-party aggregators as authorities for answering questions about service quality and reputation.

Transportation Services subindustry: Winning domains for AIO share of voice

The results:

• Tripadvisor (.18%) and USPS (.17%) hold the top two spots for AIO share of voice.
• FedEx (.11%) follows, with Uber (.06%) and Easyship (.05%) rounding out the list.

This data reveals the dual nature of transportation queries, which are split between consumer travel and logistics. TripAdvisor leads because AIOs cite its vast library of user-generated reviews and travel guides. The strong presence of primary carriers like USPS and FedEx, along with modern platforms like Uber, shows AIOs also cite these "source-of-truth" domains for specific tracking, shipping, and ride-sharing answers.

Summary

The future of digital discovery belongs to the Industrials brands that understand that AI visibility isn’t a nice-to-have metric—it’s the next frontier of search performance. Having informed, data-driven KPIs for both SEO and AEO / GEO enables digital teams to measure their total search visibility and adapt their strategies from clicks to zero-click citations.

Leverage the Industrials industry benchmarks featured here to understand how your brand performs and where there are opportunities to improve.

Remember, the shift to AI is accelerating. While AI referral traffic is a small (but high-intent) channel today, now is the time to secure your market share in these new, answer-driven results to ensure you show up first—and keep showing up first.