Commercial Solutions Engineer

New Emplifi and Semrush Report Finds 66% of Consumers Have Used AI to Research Products or Discover Gift Ideas TMCnet News [September 29, 2026] | / | New Emplifi and Semrush Report Finds 66% of Consumers Have Used AI to Research Products or Discover Gift Ideas New joint report reveals how AI, social media and search are reshaping the path to purchase NEW YORK, Sept. 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Emplifi, an AI-powered social media management platform, today unveiled The Social Search and AI Visibility Report, developed in partnership with Semrush, an Adobe company, revealing how consumers are increasingly discovering, researching and validating products across social media, AI tools and online communities rather than relying on traditional search alone. The report combines Emplifi's consumer research with Semrush's proprietary search, traffic, and AI visibility data. Together, it gives marketers a comprehensive view of how the modern discovery journey is evolving and what brands must do to remain visible. According to the report, today's consumers move fluidly between social platforms, AI assistants, search engines and trusted communities before making a purchase. Rather than following a linear path, shoppers increasingly discover products on social media, compare options using AI tools and turn to Reddit for authentic reviews and recommendations before deciding what to buy. Nearly four in ten consumers already rank social media among their top three product discovery channels, making it the single highest-ranked discovery source ahead of retail websites, search engines and email. The prominence of social media also points to the growing role of user-generated content and peer perspectives in how consumers explore products. "We're entering a new era of digital discovery where visibility is earned across an ecosystem, not a single channel," said Susan Ganeshan, Chief Marketing Officer, Emplifi. "Consumers are blending AI with authentic human recommendations to make more confident purchasing decisions, and brands need to be present in both. Organizations that rethink how they approach discovery today will build a lasting competitive advantage tomorrow." Among the report's key findings: * 66% of consumers have used AI tools to research products or discover gift ideas, while 11% now begin their product research directly with an AI tool * 85% trust product recommendations shared by other Reddit users * More than one in four consumers (26%) intentionally add "Reddit" to product searches to find authentic customer opinions * Among consumers who have made a social commerce purchase, 47% have done so through Instagram, followed by Reddit (18%) and Pinterest (17%), underscoring that different platforms play different roles in the customer journey The consumer behavior identified by Emplifi is reinforced by industry-leading search intelligence from Semrush, which shows AI is rapidly becoming a meaningful discovery channel. According to Semrush's analysis: * Combined estimated US monthly visits to five leading LLM platforms rose from approximately 2.3 million in June 2023 to 1.33 billion in June 2026 - an increse of nearly 580 times * AI referrals to 30 major US retailers have increased 190 times over the same period * AI referral traffic to the 30-domain retail basket now equals an estimated 8% of its social referral traffic, up from just 0.04% three years ago. * In a traffic-weighted June 2026 snapshot across eight major US retailers, TikTok accounted for approximately 0.5% of outbound social-referral visits, consistent with discovery occurring largely within the platform and illustrating the limitations of click-based attribution. The report also highlights Reddit's growing role at the intersection of search, community and AI. While consumers increasingly rely on Reddit to validate purchasing decisions, Semrush found that search referrals to Reddit have tripled since 2023, reaching 1.31 billion monthly visits in the US, while AI-referred visits to Reddit have grown 76 times. In the query sample, broad product-research searches frequently triggered Google AI Overviews, while searches explicitly containing 'Reddit' rarely did - a pattern consistent with users seeking community perspectives alongside AI-generated answers. "Visibility has become far more complex than rankings on a search results page. Brands now need to understand how they're discovered across AI search, including LLMs, social media platforms and trusted communities, because that's where buying decisions are increasingly influenced," said Fernando Angulo, Senior Market Research Manager at Semrush, an Adobe company. "The marketers who measure and optimize across these connected surfaces will be best positioned for strong brand visibility as AI continues to reshape digital discovery." As AI increasingly shapes the research phase of the buying journey and consumers continue to seek authentic opinions before making purchase decisions, the report concludes that brands should stop treating SEO, social media, and AI as separate disciplines. Instead, organizations should build integrated discovery strategies that improve visibility wherever consumers search, compare, and validate products. The full Social Search and AI Visibility Report is available to download here. About Emplifi Emplifi is the leading platform unifying AI-powered social media management, commerce, and customer care for more than 22,000 brands worldwide. Powered by Fuel AI, built on more than 5T of data, and recognized as a leader by leading industry analysts, Emplifi helps enterprise teams manage, publish, and optimize social media at scale, turning every post, campaign, and customer interaction into a measurable business outcome. About Semrush Semrush, an Adobe company, is the leading brand visibility platform, empowering marketers to command their online presence and create measurable impact. Built on the industry's most expansive proprietary dataset, Semrush delivers AI-driven insights across SEO, Agentic Search Optimization, content marketing, paid media, and social strategy. Used by over 28 million users globally, Semrush provides the competitive intelligence needed to win visibility in an evolving digital landscape. Learn more at semrush.com. Media contact: Jordan Lukes, Corporate Communications Director, Emplifi [email protected] Alyssa Jaffer, Product PR Lead [email protected] Methodology Emplifi consumer research Data is drawn from an online survey of 1,638 consumers across the US (n=785) and UK (n=853), conducted by Emplifi in partnership with Alchemer between April 14 and May 1, 2026. All respondents were aged 18 to 65 and active on at least two major social media platforms at least twice per week. A quota subgroup of Reddit users was included (n=865). Data was analyzed at a 95% confidence level. Statistically significant differences between markets are noted throughout the report. Semrush data Semrush figures were retrieved via the Semrush API across two datasets. Traffic and channel data (LLM-platform growth, per-platform social-referral share, and social- and AI-referral traffic to retail) come from Semrush .Trends / Traffic & Market Toolkit estimated-visits data, sampled at June 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 and broken out by acquisition channel (direct, referral, organic and paid search, social, email, and AI assistants / AI search). Retail figures represent an aggregated basket of 30 leading US e-commerce domains (with a parallel UK pull of the same basket for geographic comparison); traffic values are modeled estimates rather than log-level counts. The per-platform social-referral split (Page 4) was derived from the Traffic Sources report, filtered to the social channel and broken out by referring domain, across an 8-retailer US basket for June 2026, with referring sub-domains consolidated to their parent platform and shares reported traffic-weighted. Search-behavior data (Reddit-appended query prevalence, the "best [X]" vs "[X] reddit" comparison, and AI Overview incidence on commercial queries) come from Semrush Keyword Analytics for the US Google database; longitudinal keyword volumes were sampled at June 2023-2026 intervals, with the "best [X]" vs "[X] reddit" comparison refreshed against the September 2026 Semrush US database (search volume in Semrush is a rolling 12-month average recalculated monthly, and a dated export of the September 2026 pull is held on file). AI Overview presence was measured across intent-stratified samples of commercial and product queries using the Semrush SERP-features signal. Aggregate figures for AI Overview trigger rates, zero-click behavior, and cross-channel traffic growth are drawn from Semrush's published studies. the Traffic Channel Mix Study (50,000+ websites, 17 industries, April 2026). Selected AI mention/citation context is drawn from the Semrush AI Visibility Index 2026 (with Adobe), a study of 126M US AI-search prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews (January-April 2026). Prepared July 2026. Original first-party pulls form the report's spine; published Semrush studies and the AI Visibility Index are used as corroboration. Figures can be refreshed or extended (additional markets, wider retail baskets, a per-platform longitudinal social split, or a larger AIO query set) on request. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/new-emplifi-and-semrush-report-finds-66-of-consumers-have-used-ai-to-research-products-or-discover-gift-ideas-302892871.html [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage] |

AI visibility tools for online stores, products included. Published 26 September 2026 · Measured 1 to 25 September 2026 Greater Than Services asked five AI engines three questions a store owner asks: the best AI search optimization software for an ecommerce site, which platforms show whether a product appears in AI shopping recommendations, and which track Amazon product recommendations. Across 60 answers Semrush and Profound were named most, but each question drew its own shortlist. That split is the useful part. A store needs to know whether the answer recommends its product, not only whether it names the store, and only some tools say they track that. Key takeaways * Asked "Best AI search optimization software for e-commerce sites?", the engines named Semrush (12), Surfer (7) and BrightEdge (6) most, of 20 answers. * Asked "Which platforms let me see if my ecommerce product appears in AI shopping recommendations?", the engines named Profound (9), Ranketta (7) and Finseo (5) most, of 20 answers. * Asked "Best AI visibility software specifically for tracking Amazon product recommendations from AI assistants?", the engines named Goodie (11), Profound (10) and Alhena (6) most, of 20 answers. * 11 tools describe tracking products, items or SKUs on their own sites. What the engines recommend to a store. Every tool named at least once across the three store questions. Each question drew its own shortlist, shown in the takeaways above; the questions are listed under the table. Brand or product: the question that splits the tools. Products, not only the brand. An assistant can name your store and still recommend a competitor's product. By their own sites, Profound, Goodie, Ranketta, Peec AI, Scrunch, Writesonic, Rankscale, Dageno, RankPrompt, KIME and Yotpo Discover track at the level of products, items or SKUs. The shopping surface you sell on. AI shopping happens in several places, and each tool names different ones: * ChatGPT Shopping: Profound, Goodie, Writesonic and AthenaHQ * Amazon Rufus or Alexa: Goodie, Ranketta and Dageno * Perplexity Shopping: Goodie * Google AI Mode shopping: Goodie * Copilot: Scrunch Your catalog as the input. Tracking products starts from knowing which products you have. Alhena, Ranketta, Peec AI, Writesonic and AthenaHQ describe taking a catalog, feed or store connection such as Shopify or Google Merchant Center. What each tool says about products and shopping. Every tool on its list whose site describes a product or shopping feature, in its own words, most named for stores first. | Tool | Named for stores | Products and shopping, in their words | | Profound | 22 | Tracks product visibility in ChatGPT Shopping, down to individual SKUs. | | Alhena | 13 | Its core product: conversational shopping, upsells and answers grounded in live store data. | | Goodie | 12 | Tracks products at SKU level across ChatGPT Shopping, Amazon Rufus, Perplexity Shopping and AI Mode Shopping. | | Ranketta | 10 | Product-level visibility, an agent that rewrites titles, descriptions and attributes, and feed connections to the engines. | | Peec AI | 9 | SKU-level tracking of which products AI recommends, with the catalog pulled from Shopify or Google Merchant Center. | | Scrunch | 6 | Scrunch Shopping tracks product-level presence and share of shelf: whether products make the AI shortlist against competitors and retailers, on ChatGPT and Copilot. | | Writesonic | 5 | Product-level tracking in ChatGPT Shopping and AI recommendations, with feed optimization. | | AthenaHQ | 2 | A Shopify integration for publishing content aimed at ChatGPT Shopping. | | Rankscale | 1 | Shows shopping items and sponsored placements in AI answers, with merchant reach over time. | | Dageno | 0 | AI Shopping Visibility: which products appear in AI shopping cards, where they rank, and which retailers and source pages appear with them. | | RankPrompt | 0 | Tracks how assistants recommend a store's products on shopping queries, against competitors. | | KIME | 0 | Shows which products appear in AI answers. | | Yotpo Discover | not counted | Tracks how products rank across the AI engines by product, category and region. | Yotpo Discover is not in the count: Yotpo also sells reviews and loyalty, so a mention of the name in a store answer does not say which product was meant. Where Greater Than Services fit. Greater Than Services was named in none of these 60 answers. Greater Than Services track whether an answer names your store and what it read instead, question by question, with your Google rank beside it. Greater Than Services do not track shopping cards or individual products, so if products are the question, the tools above that describe it are the ones to try. How Greater Than Services measured this. These are buyer questions Greater Than Services track for its own product, Greater Than Services, in its own workspace. Each run puts every question to five engines, asking as a buyer in the United States. It ran four times, on 1, 2, 10 and 25 September 2026. This page uses three of the questions, which drew 60 answers: * "Best AI search optimization software for e-commerce sites?" * "Which platforms let me see if my ecommerce product appears in AI shopping recommendations?" * "Best AI visibility software specifically for tracking Amazon product recommendations from AI assistants?" * ChatGPT: OpenAI's GPT-4o with web search, through the API * Claude: Claude Haiku 4.5 with web search, through the API * Gemini: Gemini 2.5 Flash grounded in Google Search, through the API * Perplexity: Sonar, which always searches the web * Google AI Overviews: read from Google's own results page Named means the tool appears in the answer's own words. The engines write their sources into the text as links, and a link to a vendor's blog is a source, not a recommendation, so links are removed before names are matched. Own site read means the tool's website was among the sources the engine cited for that answer. A tool named in the question itself is not counted for that question, because every answer repeats it. Across all 20 questions, Google showed an AI Overview for 71 of the 80 searches, so the other 9 are not counted as answers. Answers move from week to week: asked the same question on the same engine at the next run, the engines named 54% of the same tools again. The full method, the questions Greater Than Services left out, and the data as a CSV are on the main ranking. Questions people ask. Which AI visibility tools track products rather than just brand names? By their own sites, Profound, Goodie, Ranketta, Peec AI, Scrunch, Writesonic, Rankscale, Dageno, RankPrompt, KIME and Yotpo Discover describe tracking at the level of products, items or individual SKUs. Can I track whether Amazon's AI recommends my products? Goodie, Ranketta and Dageno name Amazon's assistants among what they track. Asked which software tracks Amazon product recommendations, the engines most often named Goodie, Profound and Alhena (11, 10, 6 of 20 answers). Which tools track ChatGPT Shopping? By their own sites, Profound, Goodie and Writesonic track products in ChatGPT Shopping. AthenaHQ also names it, for publishing content aimed at it. Do I need a shopping tracker if I already track my brand in AI answers? If you sell products people ask assistants to compare, yes, because a brand can be named while a competitor's product is the one recommended. If your customers ask about the store rather than the item, brand tracking answers the question. Related reading