Discovery is changing

The key considerations for any discovery platform right now are people moving away from traditional search engines and ‘no click’ searches. AI overviews in Google results and answers directly in Claude or ChatGPT mean less people click through to websites. Estimates vary but some content heavy sites have seen more than a 70% drop in traffic.

More people at the start line

In the last 6 months we've seen some impact of this on our own numbers. Our traffic from search engines in the UK has dropped 16% YoY. On its own, a little scary. But, at the same time we've seen race entries increase. There’s a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, increased traffic from AI assistants and, most significantly, conversion rate which has improved 21% during the same period.

AI assistants - small but growing fast

Most discussions around AI assistants are really trying to predict how the internet will look in the next few years. Right now, they account for a tiny proportion of how people discover things online. Current data suggests that 0.1% to 0.2% of traffic to all websites comes from tools like ChatGPT. It’s growing fast but it’s hard to predict how behaviours will change.

On Find a Race, we’re seeing the same story. In May, our traffic from AI assistants was 138% up compared to last year. A lot of growth but it remains less than 0.3% of our total.

Higher intent, higher conversion

Our conversion rate is the highest it’s ever been. The people who reach Find a Race are now even further down the conversion path. They're even more ready to book a race. Their behaviour on the site backs this up. They stay on the site 16% longer, they view 9% more pages and they bounce from the site 6% less often than last year.

When you think about a race entrant’s typical journey to enter a race, it's clear why. Early on they might go to Google and start doing some research. A year ago, people looking for answers to these 'low intent' questions…(How far is a 10k in miles? How long do I need to train to run a half marathon?) had a good chance of ending up on Find a Race. Now they’re answered without needing to leave Google. Some of those people would have booked a race but not many at that point.

The part of the entry journey that is not affected is the bit when someone is ready to enter a race. These people need a different experience. Once they've decided to enter they have much higher intent. Their need is no longer just informational. 10k's near me or flat half marathons in Manchester are high intent searches that end up on Find a Race. These people use Find a Race for the final part of their discovery. They reach us now even more ready to sign up and convert at a much higher rate.

Looking ahead

Whilst the current picture is a really positive one. It's certainly not the time to put our heads in the sand. Things are changing quickly and there are as many questions and uncertainties as ever. What is the role of a marketplace in the future? What relationship does a discovery site need to have with LLMs? Will people's search habits completely change? Will people be happy to have an internet where everything is done through an AI agent? These are things that businesses are thinking about across all areas.

Right now AI mostly helps answer questions and find information. It's very likely that in the future agents will start to handle commerce and transactions more widely too.

But booking a race isn't the same as buying a light bulb. People are happy to take their time over it. They want to feel a bit of that race day buzz, hear what other people think, and feel like they're already part of something.

So we don't think people want a race picked for them. We think they want insightful recommendations, a place to browse, compare and get a feel for it, somewhere they choose their perfect race rather than having AI choose for them.

That's what we're focused on: making Find a Race the absolute best place to discover and enter a race. Through richer event data, natural language search, and a recommendation engine that understands much more than just applying filters. Continuing our mission to help people discover incredible races.

We'll be sharing more updates and some ambitious plans over the next few weeks and months.

-

Header image Will Harper-Penrose