- ChatGPT now drives 10% of new Vercel signups
- 10x growth from <1% to 10% in just 6 months
- Traditional SEO + LLM SEO = winning combination
When Guillermo Rauch noticed ChatGPT starting to refer users to Vercel, it was barely a blip—less than 1% of signups. Six months later, it's their fastest-growing acquisition channel at 10% of new users.
But instead of keeping their learnings secret, Vercel did something unexpected: they published their entire LLM SEO playbook.
The exponential growth curve
Rauch tracked the progression publicly:
- October 2024: Less than 1% of signups
- March 2025: 4.8% of signups
- April 2025: 10% of signups—and accelerating
"ChatGPT is gaining real ground on Google," Rauch noted, watching the numbers climb week after week.
Why Vercel won big in AI search
Vercel's success wasn't accidental. Their developer platform was perfectly positioned for AI discovery:
- Clear documentation: Thousands of pages explaining concepts in depth
- Community presence: Active in forums where developers ask questions
- Fresh content: Regular updates about Next.js, deployment, and web development
- Semantic clarity: Technical concepts explained precisely, not just keyword-stuffed
The shift from keywords to concepts
In their comprehensive guide, Vercel's team revealed a fundamental insight: LLMs don't match keywords—they interpret meaning.
Traditional SEO tactics like keyword density and backlinks still matter, but AI systems reward different signals:
| Traditional SEO | LLM SEO |
|---|---|
| Backlinks | Embedding-based relevance |
| Volume-based keywords | Natural-language queries |
| Meta descriptions | Self-contained, extractable snippets |
| Link equity | Community mentions (GitHub, Reddit) |
Vercel's LLM SEO playbook
Their engineering team identified five key strategies:
1. Find frontier concepts
"LLMs favor the first or clearest explanation of a concept. If you're early, your version may become the default."
2. Publish definitive sources
Generic summaries get skipped. Vercel includes original data, code examples, and insights competitors can't easily replicate.
3. Structure for machines
- Clean heading hierarchies (H1 → H2 → H3)
- Schema markup (TechArticle, FAQPage)
- Static HTML for AI crawlers
- Semantic elements with clear intent
4. Seed authentic citations
"If people cite you, models often follow." Vercel shares in threads, AMAs, and open-source projects.
5. Set refresh cadence
Review content at 30, 90, and 180 days. Keep information current—stale content loses AI visibility.
Beyond Google: preparing for the unbundling
Rauch's broader insight: Google is being unbundled.
"Answer engines are not going to exclusively use Google Search. Large clusters of queries are going to expert, in-situ AI products. The search is not being made."
Vercel now monitors:
- What ChatGPT says about their brand
- Visibility in Perplexity, Claude, and other AI tools
- Community mentions that influence training data
- Direct AI referral traffic from multiple sources
What this means for every business
Vercel's rapid AI growth reveals three critical shifts:
- AI discovery is here now—not some distant future
- Early movers have massive advantage—AI systems learn from existing content
- Traditional + AI SEO work together—you need both strategies
As their team concluded: "We're moving from search ranking to answer shaping."
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Read Vercel's full LLM SEO guide: How we're adapting SEO for LLMs and AI search