Information Technology 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 Information Technology

• AEO, GEO & AI Search benchmarks:
  • The IT industry sees 2.80% of its total website traffic coming from AI referrals, significantly higher than the average across all industries.
  • While semiconductors (4.09%) and software & services (3.37%) show high AI traffic penetration, the technology hardware & equipment subindustry lags significantly (0.99%).
  • The rate of AI referral traffic growth in IT has climbed, but only marginally, increasing 0.30% from July to September 2025.
  • ChatGPT drives the vast majority (88.5%) of AI referral traffic in the IT sector, though other engines like Perplexity and Gemini maintain a notable presence.
  • Market share in answer engines is highly specialized, with nxp.com (26.54%) and ti.com (18.50%) dominating the semiconductors subindustry, while microsoft.com (19.73%) leads in the technology hardware & equipment subindustry, and google.com (6.54%) leads in software & services.
• AIO benchmarks:
  • AI Overviews (AIOs) appear on 11.4% of page-one Google queries for IT, slightly below the cross-industry average.
  • Blog content was by far the most cited page source in AI Overviews, with over 300,000 pages being cited in the result.
  • Microsoft.com led the pack in both subindustries with a 1.98% share of AIO results in the software & services and technology equipment & hardware subindustries.

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 IT industry was split into three subindustries:

• Semiconductors & semiconductor equipment
• Software & services
• Technology hardware & equipment

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 IT

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 IT industry

The results:

• AI referral traffic accounts for 2.80% of all website traffic for the IT industry, the highest of all 10 analyzed industries.
  • 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.

AI referral traffic by IT subindustries

The results:

• A massive 4.09% of traffic from queries related to semiconductors & semiconductor equipment comes from AI.
• The software & services (3.37%) subindustry also saw huge numbers of AI referral traffic compared to the other industries we analyzed.
• While below the other subindustries, the technology hardware & equipment subindustry saw a still strong .99% of traffic come from AI.

This is likely due to the fact that AI is a great starting point for the complex concepts in semiconductors and software, leading to clicks for deeper dives. For physical hardware, users often prioritize visuals, direct shopping links, and trusted review sites, making AI summary citations less important and leading to fewer referrals.

Month-over-month growth in AI referral traffic change

The results:

• AI referral traffic in the IT industry rose .39% from May to September 2025.
• The rate of month-over-month growth increased marginally in each of the last 5 months.
  • The rate of AI referral traffic growth in the IT space increased .30% from July to September 2025 alone.

This increase could be due to the fact that while users are adopting AI as a starting point for IT research and troubleshooting, illustrated by the strong overall growth, the need for specific, detailed, up-to-the-minute information and actionable steps means the AI summary is often not enough to keep users from clicking on a link.

AI referral traffic vs. Traditional SEO traffic benchmarks for IT

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 2.8% of all traffic in the IT industry.
• Google makes up 30.8%, and other traffic sources contribute 66.4%.

This significant organic traffic benchmark for IT (30.8%) 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: IT industry

The results:

• On average, ChatGPT drives 88.5% of all AI referral traffic in the IT industry.
• Perplexity drove nearly 5% of AI traffic to the IT industry.

That said, while ChatGPT is the engine you should prioritize, it’s not the only answer engine you should pay attention to. All of the remaining answer engines are driving notable traffic and are likely to continue expanding 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.

IT 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 IT space. Our analysis was based on AI citations and brand mentions for May through September. The results are split across three key IT subindustries:

• Semiconductors & semiconductor equipment
• Software & services
• Technology hardware & equipment

IT industry: Top 5 domains by AI citation market share

1. google.com
2. microsoft.com
3. sap.com
4. dell.com
5. adobe.com

Tech giants google.com and microsoft.com lead AI citations, as models treat their extensive technical documentation and product guides as the primary source of truth. AI engines are clearly prioritizing these foundational domains for answers related to their market-leading software and hardware ecosystems.

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

1. Google
2. Microsoft
3. SAP
4. Apple
5. Adobe

The brand mentions list confirms the dominance of Google, Microsoft, SAP, and Adobe, proving their brand authority is just as powerful as their domain authority. The notable new entry is Apple. This indicates that while its domain may not be cited as often for technical documentation, the "Apple" brand itself is a central topic in AI-driven conversations, likely in comparative and product-related queries.

Semiconductors & semiconductor equipment subindustry market share leaders by domain citations

Below, we have the top five domains in the semiconductors & semiconductor equipment subindustry based on their share of domain citations in AI search.

This subindustry list reveals a complete divergence from the main IT industry leaders like google.com or microsoft.com. All five domains are new, specialized B2B manufacturers, with nxp.com (26.54%) and ti.com (18.50%) holding a massive, concentrated share. This signals that for highly technical queries about components and chipsets, AI models bypass general tech sites and cite these "source-of-truth" engineering domains as the primary authorities.

Software & services subindustry market share leaders by domain citations

This subindustry list is nearly identical to the overall IT industry leaders, with google.com (6.54%), microsoft.com (5.08%), and sap.com (3.44%) holding the top spots in both. This confirms that the software & services subindustry is the dominant force driving the AI citation market for the entire IT category. The one notable difference is the appearance of linkedin.com (2.19%), which replaces the hardware-focused dell.com from the main list.

Technology hardware & equipment subindustry market share leaders by domain citations

This list diverges significantly from the software-dominated industry chart, with hardware-first brands taking all the top spots. Microsoft (19.73%) and Dell (10.73%) are the clear leaders, reinforcing their domain authority for hardware. The list also features new, specialized domains like siemens.com and digikey.com, indicating that AI is sourcing answers from both major consumer brands and highly technical B2B suppliers.

AI Overview benchmarks for IT

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 Information Technology industry.

AIO visibility analysis: IT industry

The results:

• AIO results appeared for 11.4% of all Google queries in the IT industry.
• The IT space saw a below-average amount of AI Overview visibility compared to the other analyzed industries.

AIO visibility analysis: IT subindustries

The results:

• More than 11% of all Industrial queries trigger an AI Overview in Google.
• Technology hardware & equipment (19.4%) searches trigger an AIO result most often out of all IT subindustries.
• Software & services (10.8%) had the lowest, but still significant, share of AI Overviews among all IT subindustries.

While IT has complex, informational queries perfect for AIOs, the high number of navigational, troubleshooting, visual, and direct commercial queries likely brings down the overall percentage compared to other industries.

It’s also interesting to note that the presence of AI overviews is significant for all three subindustries, but the technology hardware & equipment queries trigger significantly more AI Overviews.

Page types cited most often in AIO results for IT

The results:

• Blog content was by far the most cited page source in AI Overviews, with over 300,000 pages being cited in the result.
• The next closest page type in AIO results was a product page with just over 58,000 citations.

The key takeaway here is that your content is much more likely to appear in AIO results for IT queries if it’s blog content. This is likely due to the fact that AI Overviews need content that explains and solves. In the IT world, blogs are the primary vehicle for that kind of detailed, instructional, and expert-driven content, making them far more likely candidates for citation than sales-focused product pages.

IT 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 semiconductors & semiconductor equipment, software & services, and technology hardware & equipment subindustries.

Semiconductors & semiconductor equipment subindustry: Winning domains for AIO share of voice

The results:

• NVIDIA (.02%) and Broadcom (.02%) are in a statistical tie for the top AIO share of voice.
• Texas Instruments (.01%), Analog Devices (.01%), and AMD (.01%) follow, each with an equal share.

The key insight here is the extreme market fragmentation, with leaders capturing only hundredths of a percent. This indicates that for these highly technical B2B queries, AIOs are synthesizing answers from a vast and diverse ecosystem of sources, likely including research papers and distributor sites, rather than citing one or two dominant brands. The leaders are all "source-of-truth" manufacturers, showing that AIOs go directly to the source for specific technical data.

Software & services subindustry: Winning domains for AIO share of voice

The results:

• Microsoft (1.98%) leads the AIO share of voice in this subindustry.
• LinkedIn (1.49%) and Google (1.35%) follow, capturing the second and third spots.

This subindustry is dominated by the tech giants, with Microsoft and Google leading as primary, authoritative domains for their own software ecosystems. The most significant insight is the #2 ranking of LinkedIn. This shows that AIOs are heavily relying on their massive library of professional articles and expert-driven content (E-E-A-T) to answer complex B2B software and service-related questions.

Technology hardware & equipment subindustry: Winning domains for AIO share of voice

The results:

• Microsoft (1.98%) leads the AIO share of voice, making it a top performer in both hardware and software.
• Apple (1.29%) takes the #2 spot, followed by Samsung (.39%).

This list is a "who's who" of the world's largest hardware manufacturers. This clearly signals that when users ask AIOs about specific devices, technical specs, or direct comparisons like Surface vs. MacBook, Google is citing the official brand domains as the ultimate source of truth. Unlike the fragmented semiconductor market, AIO share here is highly concentrated among these top-tier consumer brands.

Summary

The future of digital discovery belongs to the IT 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 IT 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.