The digital marketing landscape has fundamentally shifted, and here’s the data that proves it: 65% of AI chatbot conversations have absolutely nothing to do with buying anything. This isn’t speculation: it’s the hard reality uncovered by Dan Petrovic’s comprehensive December 2025 analysis of 3.9 million AI conversation turns.
For SEO professionals and content marketers, this statistic represents more than just interesting research. It’s a wake-up call that traditional conversion-focused strategies are missing the vast majority of AI-driven interactions happening right now.
What People Are Actually Using AI For
The research reveals a striking truth: people use AI assistants primarily for creation, cognition, and conversation: not commerce. Instead of “buy now” queries, users are leveraging AI for brainstorming sessions, project planning, learning new concepts, and even seeking emotional support.
The non-commercial breakdown tells the complete story:
- 25% fall into miscellaneous “other” categories
- 7.7% are brainstorming sessions
- 6.5% involve planning activities
- 6.2% seek conversation and emotional support
- 5.7% focus on analysis tasks
- 4.7% are learning-oriented
- 4.6% involve content transformation
- 3.9% center on creative tasks
This isn’t random user behavior: it’s a fundamental shift in how people approach problem-solving and information gathering. They’re treating AI as a collaborative partner rather than a search engine.
The Commercial Intent Reality Check
Of the remaining 35.4% of conversations that do show commercial intent, most occur in the early stages of the customer journey. Awareness-stage interactions account for just 10% of total chats, while consideration-stage conversations represent 8.5%. Combined, these critical early-funnel interactions comprise only 18.5% of all AI activity.
Here’s what’s particularly telling: post-purchase support needs (5.1%) actually outrank transactional decision support (2.8%). Users turn to AI more often asking “how do I use this?” than “should I buy this?”
This data destroys the assumption that AI search behavior mirrors traditional Google searches. People aren’t using ChatGPT or Claude the way they use Google: they’re engaging in multi-step conversations with context, follow-up questions, and evolving needs.
Why Traditional SEO Strategies Are Failing
The keyword-optimization playbook no longer applies to AI interactions. Users don’t type “best running shoes 2025” into ChatGPT: they start conversations like “I’m training for my first marathon and need advice on choosing the right gear for my running style and budget constraints.”
The median AI chat spans just 2 turns, but the conversations with genuine commercial potential are longer, more exploratory, and contextually rich. This means your content needs to support extended problem-solving sessions, not just answer single queries.
Traditional transactional content: product pages optimized for “buy now” keywords: captures a microscopic fraction of AI-driven visibility. Meanwhile, educational resources, comprehensive guides, and thought-leadership pieces that address the problems users are actively brainstorming around remain invisible to most SEO strategies.
The Content Strategy Revolution
Quality trumps quantity in the AI era: and the data proves it. While most AI chats lack commercial intent, website visitors arriving from AI search are 4.4x more valuable than those from organic search. This suggests that even non-commercial AI interactions drive exceptionally high-quality traffic when your content addresses real user needs.
Content types that dominate AI interactions include:
- Transformation tasks (4.6%): Summarization, translation, format conversion
- Creative projects (3.9%): Writing assistance, code generation, documentation
- Analysis work (5.7%): Data interpretation, comparison studies, evaluation
- Learning resources (4.7%): Tutorials, explanations, skill development
Your content portfolio must expand beyond the traditional sales funnel to capture this massive engagement opportunity. Educational content, comprehensive reference materials, and problem-solving resources now carry more SEO weight than thin, keyword-stuffed pages designed purely for conversions.
Actionable Strategies for the AI-First Future
Embrace informational depth over transactional optimization. Since awareness (10%) and consideration (8.5%) stages dominate commercial AI interactions, businesses must prioritize content that educates and explores rather than content designed to close immediate sales.
Create comprehensive resources that can be chunked, summarized, and transformed across formats. Long-form guides, technical documentation, and reference materials perform exceptionally well because AI assistants can extract relevant sections for different user contexts.
Optimize for conversational depth. Structure your content to answer not just primary questions, but the follow-up questions users naturally ask in AI conversations. Think in terms of complete problem-solving journeys rather than isolated keyword targets.
Prioritize post-purchase value creation. With post-purchase support (5.1%) outranking transactional decisions (4.8%), your content strategy should include robust troubleshooting guides, advanced usage tutorials, and value-maximization resources. These pieces capture ongoing customer engagement and build long-term relationships.
Focus on the brainstorming and planning phases. Combined, these represent 14.2% of all AI interactions: a massive audience segment most businesses completely ignore. Create content that supports ideation, project planning, and strategic thinking in your industry.
The Competitive Advantage Hidden in Plain Sight
Most businesses are still optimizing for the 2.8% of AI interactions focused on immediate purchase decisions. Meanwhile, forward-thinking companies are capturing visibility across the 65% of non-commercial interactions that build awareness, establish expertise, and create future commercial opportunities.
This isn’t about abandoning commercial content: it’s about recognizing that effective AI optimization requires a fundamentally broader approach. Your content portfolio should include educational resources targeting brainstorming sessions, comprehensive references for learning interactions, and post-purchase materials that maximize customer value.
The businesses winning in this AI-driven landscape aren’t chasing immediate conversions through AI search. They’re building the foundational resources that AI assistants reference when helping users solve problems: whether those problems are immediately commercial or not.
Turn Non-Commercial AI Chats Into SEO Wins With Chatly
Here’s the thing: if 65% of AI chats are non-commercial, your chatbot is no longer a passive FAQ—it’s a frontline SEO asset. A specialized assistant like Chatly turns informational conversations into measurable search advantages, delivering value even when no sale occurs.
- ✅ Actionable SEO insights: Extract intent clusters, top questions, and the exact language your audience uses—fuel keyword expansion, internal linking, and FAQ/HowTo schema updates.
- ✅ Brand engagement at scale: Deliver consistent, on-brand answers, resource recommendations, and smart handoffs to demos or human support without the hard sell.
- ✅ Audience learnings you can ship: Convert zero-party conversational data into briefs for articles, tutorials, and post‑purchase guides—the content LLMs prefer to cite.
- ✅ Measurement that matters: Track completion, satisfaction, and assisted conversions so you know which conversations drive downstream revenue and retention.
- ✅ AI-first content amplification: Export structured insights to strengthen topic clusters, glossaries, and reference hubs that increase your mention share in AI results.
Bottom line: non‑commercial doesn’t mean non‑valuable. With Chatly, every chat becomes a content signal, a brand touchpoint, and an SEO opportunity your team can activate.
Try Chatly for smarter SEO conversations: https://hellochatly.com
Want help operationalizing this? Expert SEO Consulting integrates Chatly conversation data into AI SEO audits and content strategy—book a consultation and we’ll wire this into your stack: https://expertseoconsulting.com/book-a-consultation/
Your Next Steps
The 65% statistic isn’t a challenge to overcome: it’s an opportunity to dominate. While your competitors focus on the tiny slice of transactional AI interactions, you can build authority across the vast majority of AI-driven conversations happening in your industry.
Ready to revolutionize your content strategy for the AI era? The fundamentals of search marketing have permanently changed, and businesses that adapt now will capture disproportionate market share as AI adoption accelerates.
Expert SEO Consulting specializes in helping businesses navigate exactly these kinds of seismic industry shifts. We’ll audit your current content against AI interaction patterns and develop a strategy that captures visibility across all types of AI conversations: not just the commercial ones.
Book a consultation today to discover how your business can thrive in the AI-first future of search marketing.
