discuss LLM/Ai Mode Vs regular search mode and your domain landing pages

[Eric Lyon]

Ok, so it's been a while since Ai search and assistants appeared and have been leveraged in search engines and browsers all over the world now. Everyone's played with it, tested different things and formed an opinion about it. Some have even claimed that domain name URLs are dying and the future is bleak (The sky is falling).

But, what's the real story based on user experience?...

Traditional old school domain investors tend to debate that exact-match domains (EMDs) remain the ultimate trust signal for humans and that Ai will never replace them (Always a need for a premium category-killer domain name).

On the other side of the room, futurists (newer domain investors) suggest that in a developing "vibe-coding" world, domain names will start to function more as back-end data anchors for LLM's (Large Language Models) rendering the EMD's and premium category-killers a moot point, since it's the content that the Ai's are after primarily, sweeping the domain itself under the carpet, with a reference link to see the source instead of directing the viewer/researcher to the actual website/lander URL (Potential revenue loss for those running PPC, PPL, PPS, etc. monetization models).

Granted, personally, I'm a firm believer that direct typin traffic will always be a thing (E.g. short, memorable, brandable customers never forget and type in directly when they want to visit a specific business, service or product.). But then, I also have to consider that even before Ai assisted search and LLM's, people started relying on BookMarks to find everything they need later, because they did and do forget the EMD, which is why BookMark features are so popular today (Though, that may be mainly the longer, harder to remember domains and tools on sub-domains that get bookmarked).

At any rate, not looking to write an article or book, just curious what others think about it today, after playing with it a while and see how their own websites or landing pages (More interested in landing page data) are doing in search versus Ai assisted LLM's.

Questions:

• Has your traffic increased or decreased in the last 12 to 24 months?
• Besides Google AFD closing down and killing revenue streams, has Ai assisted LLM/search hurt your bottom line or helped it?
• Are you finding that you have to rely more or less on 3rd party social platforms to drive traffic to your domains today?
• Not all, but some landing pages (Like namePros Landers) are indexed in search engines to easily be found in an organic search. But are there any use cases you can think of or reference where domain landing pages (in general) are being referenced in Ai Mode of a browser/search engine? (I ask this because I tried 5 different terms in Ai Mode and none referenced a sales lander or parked page for related terms to the EMD or content on said EMD landers - The terms did work in regular search)

What say you?

 

[LuxeWord]

Questions:

• Has your traffic increased or decreased in the last 12 to 24 months?
• Besides Google AFD closing down and killing revenue streams, has Ai assisted LLM/search hurt your bottom line or helped it?
• Are you finding that you have to rely more or less on 3rd party social platforms to drive traffic to your domains today?
• Not all, but some landing pages (Like namePros Landers) are indexed in search engines to easily be found in an organic search. But are there any use cases you can think of or reference where domain landing pages (in general) are being referenced in Ai Mode of a browser/search engine? (I ask this because I tried 5 different terms in Ai Mode and none referenced a sales lander or parked page for related terms to the EMD or content on said EMD landers - The terms did work in regular search)

Great breakdown — this is exactly the right conversation to be having now.
I think both sides are partially right. AI is definitely changing how discovery happens, but not necessarily what builds trust. LLMs may abstract the URL in many cases, but when it comes to decision-making, transactions, or brand recall, domains still matter.
EMDs might lose some search visibility advantage, but they retain value as

• Trust signals
• Conversion assets
• Memorable entry points (direct / branded traffic)

Also, one thing I’m noticing: AI shifts traffic from browsing → intent. Fewer clicks overall, but potentially higher-quality visitors when they do click through.
On landers specifically, I’ve yet to see consistent AI referencing of sales landers either, which suggests the following:
Domains are becoming more of a backend asset + brand layer, rather than just a traffic play.
Curious to see how this evolves, especially for PPC-heavy portfolios.

 

[Eric Lyon]

Great breakdown — this is exactly the right conversation to be having now.
I think both sides are partially right. AI is definitely changing how discovery happens, but not necessarily what builds trust. LLMs may abstract the URL in many cases, but when it comes to decision-making, transactions, or brand recall, domains still matter.
EMDs might lose some search visibility advantage, but they retain value as

• Trust signals
• Conversion assets
• Memorable entry points (direct / branded traffic)

Also, one thing I’m noticing: AI shifts traffic from browsing → intent. Fewer clicks overall, but potentially higher-quality visitors when they do click through.
On landers specifically, I’ve yet to see consistent AI referencing of sales landers either, which suggests the following:
Domains are becoming more of a backend asset + brand layer, rather than just a traffic play.
Curious to see how this evolves, especially for PPC-heavy portfolios.

While I appreciate your reply, I think it missed the mark a little.

I guess I'm trying to figure out why ai mode/llm driven search isn't referencing or acknowledging seo/sem optimized landing pages that work and index just fine in a normal search query, but seem to not exist at all in an ai mode/llm assisted search.

In order to get up to speed with current tech and times, I feel it's imperative we figure out how to fix that to make sure domains on seo/sem optimized sales landers get some attention in the future of ai search tech.

If it doesn't change and domain sales landers remain in the shadows of the future, it's going to be that much harder for organic search driven leads to hit all our landing pages in 5 to 10 years from now, maybe sooner.

I'm surprised more people are not interested in this topic, especially those that use landing or parked pages for their domain names.

I guess I'll have to try to schedule some time to dive deeper into this myself and research it more to find a solution.

If anyone has some real world use cases where they managed to get an ai mode/llm assisted search to reference a domain sales lander, please share it, as that may be a good starting point to dissect and figure out how to replicate it for all sales landers.

 

[biggie]

Hi

how many more times will this topic be discussed in this section?

https://www.namepros.com/threads/go...-impact-on-the-domain-industry.1354083/unread

and if you look below this thread you’ll see similar threads below

imo…

 

[Eric Lyon]

Hi

how many more times will this topic be discussed in this section?

https://www.namepros.com/threads/go...-impact-on-the-domain-industry.1354083/unread

and if you look below this thread you’ll see similar threads below

imo…

This topic is different than the others and there has never been a solution to landing pages showing in ai assisted/llm search that I've seen in any of the other threads, so i dedicated this one specifically to figuring out how to get landing pages referenced in ai assisted search tech,

Maybe i missed the solution (Overlooked it), could you link to the post that shows how domain landing pages have accomplished being referenced today? maybe some examples/use cases?

Are your domains on landing pages being referenced in an Ai Mode/LLM driven search?

If you/we just keep sweeping this topic under the carpet and refuse to find a solution, it will never get fixed and that's a ton of potential landing page exposure lost.

I look forward to your solutions/use cases

 

[biggie]

Hi

if, the questions are about search engines or a way to optimize landing pages that never really got rank in se’s anyway… then shouldn’t this be in seo or website optimization discussions?

it’s not about domains, it’s about landing pages and being found or how to be found in the a eye environment

just saying/

imo…

 

[Eric Lyon]

Hi

if, the questions are about search engines or a way to optimize landing pages that never really got rank in se’s anyway… then shouldn’t this be in seo or website optimization discussions?

it’s not about domains, it’s about landing pages and being found or how to be found in the a eye environment

just saying/

imo…

You really don't think domain landing page discussion is domain related? Or you're not interested in those using them being seen in Ai mode browsers?

The general domain discussion section is for domain related topics, last I checked.

This topic could potentially assist countless parking companies, registrars and marketplaces tweak domain landing pages to work and be seen in ai mode.

I get you don't like ai, but other people may want to adapt, improvise and overcome the domain landing page obstacle ai mode seems to present for them.

Rather than debate if domain landing pages is a domain related topic. It might be more helpful and productive to discuss ways to get domain landers seen and referenced by ai mode browsers.

That's just my opinion though.

 

[biggie]

Hi

how many use such browsers and how many are dependent on search engines for visibility

when you break it down,
it’s not about landers, it’s all about a eye, because there was no issue before it took over.
personally, I still get email inquiries and landers aren’t a factor outside of the marketplaces.

imo…

 

[Eric Lyon]

That's a good start for the discussion @biggie

how many use such browsers and how many are dependent on search engines for visibility

I found this ventures end of 2025 analysis of it interesting:

AI Mode Usage Statistics Key Highlights​

• AI Mode has 75 million users as of December 2025, growing 4x since May launch
• Over 100 million monthly active users across U.S. and India markets
• AI Mode usage increased from 0.25% in May to over 1% of searches by July 2025
• Google AI Overviews reaches 2 billion monthly users globally
• ChatGPT records 800 million weekly active users worldwide as of early 2026
• 46% of U.S. employees use AI at work, up from 40% in Q2 2025
• 91% of organizations use at least one AI technology
• AI Mode shows 69% click-through rate for transactional queries
• 68% of consumers fact-check information from AI Mode and AI Overviews
• Global AI adoption reached 16.3% of world population in late 2025

Source

It seems like a waste to not have landing pages reach those percentages as they use ai mode daily anyways. Even if the end result is 0.5% conversions, that 0.5% could be anywhere from 2-figures to 6-figures, depending on the circumstances, making it worth the opportunity of being a reference in someones ai mode output.

when you break it down,
it’s not about landers, it’s all about a eye, because there was no issue before it took over.

That doesn't change how many people are leveraging ai today (See the analysis quoted above). some may not like it, but that's normal for any large scale change. There's always push-back in the beginning, but eventually, the flood gates open. Some will get left behind, some will drown and others will ride the wave a while.

The analysis above shows a strong forward push happening, that landing pages need to get on-board with sooner than later, to ride the same wave others are, without getting left behind.

personally, I still get email inquiries and landers aren’t a factor outside of the marketplaces.

Absolutely! I get it....

However, just like some prefer to list in multiple marketplaces, why not add ai mode visibility for landers at one of those marketplaces for a specific domain on a specific landing page being referenced in ai mode output for people to visit directly and skip having to visit the marketplace first to search for a domain name related to their interests.

Not only does it add another avenue of leads for a domain investor, it draws in new customers to registrars, registries and payment processors that benefit from the visitors during the negotiation and transaction process.

It's a win, win for multiple domain industry related ventures.

If you or anyone else reading all this knows of or finds a way that landing pages directly get referenced in an ai mode output that can be verified/reproduced, it would be a step in the right direction to expanding on it, to scale for everyone in the industry to benefit from it.

At any rate, I appreciate the discussion with you about it. 2 humans, tossing out ideas, opinions and thoughts.

Like the good old days...

 

[biggie]

Hi

when a eye becomes a visibility issue for the inventory that marketplaces contain,
then they, will make any optimizations needed to remedy the issue, and that’s only if they recognize it as being one.

to me, a friggin eye will miss a lot more data than landers, if it chooses not to include them by default…like every other piece of information it’s been absorbing.

so, maybe you fret too soon

imo…

 

[NickB]

I did a few searches in incognito

Is (domain) for sale?

Looks like domains listed on Atom show up in Google Ai search results

Tested some with NamePros Landers and they didn't show up....

Find that surprising considering the authority that NamePros has.....then again, transisiting from a pure forum to a dual forum domain selling platform/lander is probably sending mixed signals to Ai ? Worth looking at internally....maybe...

 

[Eric Lyon]

so, maybe you fret too soon

There's 3 types of people: One is always early, one always arrive right on time and the other, is always late. I like to always be early and never late.

I did a few searches in incognito

Is (domain) for sale?

Looks like domains listed on Atom show up in Google Ai search results

Tested some with NamePros Landers and they didn't show up....

Find that surprising considering the authority that NamePros has.....then again, transisiting from a pure forum to a dual forum domain selling platform/lander is probably sending mixed signals to Ai ? Worth looking at internally....maybe...

Interesting...

Thanks for sharing, I'll test using ATOM later today as per your findings to see how that's playing out in comparison to nP landers to see if i can figure out why they are being treated differently.

Tagging a few moderator teams here since namePros landers were mentioned by you specifically, as not being referenced in ai mode compared to ATOM landers (Maybe one of them have ideas as to why). @Echo Mod Team - @Alfa Mod Team - @Bravo Mod Team

 

[Eric Lyon]

Tested some with NamePros Landers and they didn't show up....

nP Lander test using your test phrase/sequence...

Search term: "is TexicanaGypsy.com for sale?"

Standard Search Result:

Note: Shows fine in a standard search.

Ai Mode Result:

Note: Ai Mode is not recognizing the domain being listed for sale anywhere.

-------------------------

Search Term: "Is TexicanaGypsy.com indexed in search engines?"

Standard Search Result:

Note: As seen in the first search result, the domain is indeed indexed in search and shows on page 1 for a few different terms.

Ai Mode result:

Note: While it's nice that regular search shows it's indexed and has it on the first page for a few different terms, it would be much nicer if it showed in ai mode results.

There's either some conflict between regular search and ai mode or the underlying issue may stem from ai mode identifying and categorizing it as a parked page (See results above), where ai mode redacts such categories, even though regular search retains them.

Head scratcher... I'll dig around more later...

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

Tested some with NamePros Landers and they didn't show up....

It's just hit or miss (for all marketplaces) because Google's AI is garbage:

OpenAI's AI (ChatGPT) is much better and far more popular:

It's solely a shortcoming of Google's AI, not with their index or anything else.

Google will improve their AI over time. Currently, it's barely usable.