A Search Engine Journal study of 51,000 domains found that 74.9% received an AI citation, but but only 38.3% were actually named in the answer. That means your firm's content can be feeding ChatGPT responses while a competitor gets the name mention and the call.
Your website feeds AI answers that recommend someone else
62% of AI citations are "ghost citations". These are citations where the source is used but the brand is never named in the answer text. ChatGPT is the main culprit: it cites sources 87% of the time but names brands in the answer only 20.7% of the time. Gemini is the opposite. It names brands in 83.7% of appearances, with far fewer formal source links.
What to do right now: Pick one high-intent query relevant to your practice ("financial planner [suburb]" or "SMSF adviser Melbourne") and run it in both ChatGPT and Gemini. If ChatGPT returns a footnote link to your website but never says your name in the body text, you're being ghost-cited. That's your content working for someone else's recommendation.
🔗 Source: Search Engine Journal
AI-referred prospects convert 42% better. And that's a recent development
Adobe Digital Insights analysed over 1 trillion U.S. website visits. AI-driven traffic converted 42% better than non-AI in March 2026, outperforming paid search and email. Twelve months earlier, the same traffic was 38% less likely to convert. That's an 80-point swing in one year. The channel has matured.
What to do this week: Open your website analytics and look at direct traffic over the last three months. AI-referred visitors often convert, then search your name directly. This usually shows up as "direct" or "branded search" in GA4, not as a referral from ChatGPT. An unexplained uptick in direct traffic suggests AI is already working. Flat direct traffic suggests it isn't yet.
Source: Search Engine Land
27% of Australians use AI for initial financial research, and then call a human
Great Southern Bank's latest research found 27% of Australians now use AI for financial insights, with 21% specifically using ChatGPT-style tools in the past twelve months. Gen Z and Millennials are at 38% and 34% respectively. But 56% still say they'd call a financial adviser first for a significant decision. Only around 10% would rely on AI alone.
That distinction matters. AI is where a prospective client decides who to call and where they get an initial overview of their financial situation.
What to do this week: If a colleague says "my clients are older" or "AI isn't how people find advisers yet," the data cuts both ways: their current clients may not be, but their Millennial clients (34%) are already using AI for initial financial research. Ask anyone in your next conversation where they'd start if they needed to find a specialist. Most will say Google or ChatGPT.
Source: Money Management
44% of what ChatGPT cites is a "best of" list
An Ahrefs study of 26,000 ChatGPT-cited sources found that "best X" pages (like "best financial planner in [suburb]" or "best SMSF adviser Melbourne", for example) make up 44% of ChatGPT's citation footprint. That's nearly half of every citation ChatGPT makes, flowing through one content type. Educational articles about financial planning don't make this list. Comparative, ranked content does.
What to do this week: Search "best financial planner [your suburb]" in ChatGPT and note which pages appear. If none of them includes your firm, that's 44% of ChatGPT's citation category with no path to your name.
The fix is getting your practice listed accurately on sources AI platforms already cite, but the routes matter. Self-publishing a "best of" list featuring yourself creates misleading conduct exposure under RG 234. Paid comparison sites (Canstar, Adviser Ratings, Finder) are a grey area: RG 234 requires full disclosure of any payment for inclusion, a warning if not all providers are listed, and the site needs to be licensed if its ranking methodology constitutes financial advice. Many don't meet all three cleanly. The genuinely clean routes are factual entity data on ASIC's own Financial Advisers Register and Moneysmart's find-an-adviser tool, industry body directories (FAAA), open knowledge bases like Wikidata, and independent editorial coverage where no payment changes hands. These are also the sources AI platforms weight most heavily for entity accuracy, which makes the compliance-safe path and the AEO-effective path the same path.
Source: Search Engine Journal
All four of these findings point in the same direction: AI search has crossed from experimental to commercial. The conversion data is real, the citation mechanics are documented, and the Millennial cohort is already using it to decide who to call. The question for financial services firms in 2026 is whether their practice shows up in those answers, or quietly feeds the answers that send clients to someone else.
More tomorrow.