ChatGPT searched the live web for 34.5% of queries in February 2026, according to Semrush’s analysis of more than one billion lines of U.S. clickstream data.
This means a significant share of prompts could depend on information fetched from the web rather than the model’s training data.
More than 800 million people use ChatGPT each week, and according to the Reuters Institute, the primary function is seeking information and advice.
More consumers are using AI to find products, and those searches are already sending traffic to retail websites:
- About 26% of U.S. adults used ChatGPT in February 2026 to search for products, according to Forrester.
- AI referrals to U.S. retail sites rose 393% year-over-year in Q1 2026, according to Adobe Analytics.
That makes website accessibility part of the discovery process. When AI systems retrieve and synthesize web content, a page has to be reachable before it can influence an answer or receive a referral.
A brilliant page that loads slowly, depends on difficult rendering, or gets blocked by technical barriers can be harder for search systems to reach and process.
How Does Website Speed Affect AI Search Visibility?
HigherVisibility approaches this problem through its Targeted Growth System®, which connects SEO and AI search work to buyer behavior, technical health, and business goals.
Its AI search guidance recommends measuring whether a brand is mentioned, cited, and positioned in generated answers.
“That visibility depends partly on the website itself, which is why our SEO guidance also focuses on clear page structure, descriptive headings, useful content, and regular technical audits,” says Adam Heitzman, Managing Partner at HigherVisibility.
Google provides a technical benchmark for understanding why those basics matter:
- Pages must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search before they can appear in Google’s AI features
- The way Google finds and processes pages remains central to how its AI systems access website data
In other words, content has to exist, the crawler has to reach it, the page has to be processed, and the information has to be available to the system that may use it in an answer.
Sounds simple, right?
But content quality and accessibility determine whether the content can get into that pool in the first place.
Speed also plays a role in this process, as crawling is constrained by bandwidth, time, and the availability of Googlebot instances.
Google says it may be able to crawl more pages if a server responds quickly, and it points to both server response time and rendering time as relevant to crawling efficiency.
“That doesn’t prove a faster site will receive more ChatGPT citations,” Heitzman says.
“What it does establish is that retrieval has technical limits, and faster responses can give crawlers more room to process content.”
That makes server performance, crawlable URLs, internal linking and clean page structure part of the visibility equation.
Why Does AI Search Need Fresh, Crawlable Content?
Crawling after a new page or change can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and requesting a recrawl doesn’t guarantee immediate inclusion.
That timing matters when the goal is to be referenced for information that buyers actively use to make decisions.
A recently updated service, product, or policy page has little value in an AI answer if the relevant system hasn’t found the new information.
Semrush found that ChatGPT is more likely to trigger searches for recent facts, information newer than its training cutoff, or prompts where users ask for sources.
ChatGPT’s June 2024 training cutoff means newer business information has to come from live search when it is needed in an answer.
That makes it important to check whether recently published or updated information is actually being retrieved.
HigherVisibility’s published methodology includes testing prompts across AI platforms and tracking brand mentions, citations, and positioning.
Its approach shows which information appears in AI answers and which sources are being cited.
“With frequently changing products, services, or policies, this provides a way to check whether recent updates are reaching the AI search results where buyers may encounter them,” Heitzman says.
AI search visibility depends on both having current information and making sure search systems can find it.
HigherVisibility’s recommendations cover both sides.
On the technical side, the agency points to crawlability, rendering, site architecture, structured data, and internal linking.
On the content side, it recommends clear, answer-focused content that AI systems can extract and cite.
The point is that AI search can’t retrieve what it can’t reach.
With ChatGPT using web search on 34.5% of queries and AI referrals growing quickly, the website’s technical layer is now part of the brand’s answerability.
Content may earn the citation, but the infrastructure has to make that content reachable first.
