As of March, AI traffic to U.S. retailer websites has increased 269% over the past 12 months, continuing the momentum from the holiday season, when AI traffic increased 693%, according to new data released by Adobe on Thursday.
And in the first three months of 2026, AI traffic grew 393% year over year as more consumers used AI assistants to shop online.
The impact is not just a change in traffic sources. Data shows that AI visitors convert better, have higher engagement rates, spend more time on site, and earn more revenue per visit, often reversing trends from just a year ago when loyal customers were more valuable to retailers.
Adobe’s insights are based on analysis of online transactions by the Adobe Analytics division, which covers more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites. The analysis also relied on a survey of more than 5,000 U.S. respondents about the use of AI when shopping, as well as LLM’s new AI Content Visibility Checker tool designed to test the accessibility of retail websites.
In an Adobe survey, 39% of people say they use AI to shop online, and 85% say AI improves their experience. These findings can be attributed to how AI helps people narrow down products and take advantage of discounts to find what they need. Additionally, 66% of those surveyed said they trust AI tools to provide accurate results when shopping.
Unlike publishers who are seeing a decline in referral traffic due to AI, retailers are being encouraged to make their sites AI-enabled.
According to Adobe data, AI traffic converted 42% better than live customers in March 2026, setting a new record. Notably, this is a reversal of a trend that told a different story just a year ago. In March 2025, AI traffic had a 38% worse conversion rate than regular people.
Additionally, Adobe found that when consumers access retail sites through AI sources, their engagement rates tend to be 12% higher than those using non-AI sources. Data shows that shoppers are spending more time on websites (48% more) and viewing more pages (13% more pages per visit).
In terms of sales, AI generated 37% higher revenue per visit (RPV) than non-AI traffic as of March. Just 12 months ago, regular human traffic was worth 128% more than AI.
However, Adobe warns that not all sites are AI-ready. They found that approximately a quarter of the content on retailers’ home pages was not optimized for LLM, and the content on category pages was also not optimized. The situation for individual product pages is even worse, with approximately 34% of pages not being properly accessed by AI.
The company suggests that if retailers want to continue to attract the attention of online shoppers, they should strive to make their sites more accessible to LLMs.
