AI Traffic Has Increased 9.7x in the Past Year

Google sends a whopping 210x more traffic than the “Big three” AI platforms–though the gap has narrowed since March, when Google sent 345x more traffic.

But what immediately jumped out at me from this latest data capture was ChatGPT’s growth.

In our previous study, Reddit was out-referring all three major AI platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini) combined.

Now, ChatGPT alone sends out marginally more traffic than Reddit (+0.05%) and LinkedIn (+0.06%).

The bar isn’t exactly high here. Reddit and LinkedIn are famously zero-click platforms, designed to disincentivize off-site visits. But it shows clear growth, nonetheless.

And it doesn’t end there.

ChatGPT has driven AI traffic growth almost single-handedly, growing 85% since January.

It has further cemented its status as the top AI referrer–sending >80% of AI traffic–up ~30% since our last study.

The “big three” AI traffic referrers have also changed since we last looked–Copilot is back in business following a referral outage, and now sends on more AI traffic than Gemini.

In all, this new trio refer 0.19% of a site’s total traffic on average (up from 0.12% in March).

Wrapping up

AI traffic is still marginal–nothing has changed there–but the makeup of that traffic is shifting, and we’ve witnessed some moderate growth.

While it has levelled out for now, I’m confident there’s still more to come.

As search clicks decline, AI clicks are on the up–but as I’ve said before, AI is never going to be a significant source of traffic for most sites.

And there isn’t a world where AI traffic will replace the traffic we’ve enjoyed from search.

The MO of any AI platform is to answer a user’s questions natively, after all.

So, overlook search at your peril…

In the words of Glenn Gabe:

“I think site owners run the risk of missing the forest for the trees by heavily focusing on AI search right now and ignoring Google Search…the fact of the matter is that Google still drives the most traffic to sites by a mile.”

Of course, AI is not just about traffic–it drives brand awareness, and can hand over more informed users.

But we all need to weigh AI’s value to us, individually, and be strategic about how we allocate our resources to it.

If you choose to actively pursue AI traffic, our data shows that ChatGPT is the platform to focus on.

We’ve only just released conversion tracking in Ahrefs Web Analytics, but as soon as we have enough data, I’m hoping to dig into AI conversions.

Until then, we’ll keep tracking the trends and sharing what we find.