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AI Referral Traffic Statistics

How much traffic AI chatbots send to websites, which bots dominate referrals, and how that compares with Google. Figures are drawn from Ahrefs multi-site studies and related Ahrefs panel trackers—each linked for verification.

Last updated: · 10 sourced statistics

Sourced statistics

0.17%

0.17% of the average website’s traffic came from AI chatbots in Ahrefs’ study summarized February 6, 2025 (“63% of Websites Receive AI Traffic”).

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

Note: Average share across the studied site sample.

63%

63% of websites in Ahrefs’ ~3,000-site sample received AI traffic overall, according to the same February 6, 2025 Ahrefs study.

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

98%

98% of AI traffic in that Ahrefs sample was sent by three chatbots (ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini), according to Ahrefs’ February 6, 2025 study.

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

>50%

ChatGPT sent over half of all AI traffic in Ahrefs’ February 2025 multi-bot comparison, followed by Perplexity (just shy of a third) and Gemini (~18%), according to Ahrefs.

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

9.7×

AI traffic grew about 9.7× over the prior year in Ahrefs’ June 26, 2025 analysis “AI Traffic Has Increased 9.7x in the Past Year.”

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

Note: Year-over-year growth in Ahrefs’ measured AI referral traffic.

0.19%

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini together referred 0.19% of a site’s total traffic on average (up from 0.12% in March) in the Ahrefs June 2025 update.

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

−21%

Over the same year Ahrefs measured AI traffic growth of ~9.7×, the average site’s search traffic dropped by about 21%, according to Ahrefs’ June 26, 2025 post.

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

Note: Search traffic change in the same analysis—not solely caused by AI chatbots.

0.28%

All AI chatbots combined sent 0.28% of total web traffic across 74,752 tracked websites in March 2026, according to Ahrefs’ May 15, 2026 “AI Chatbot Traffic” article.

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

28.12%

Google sent a 28.12% traffic share (345.2M visitors in the panel summary) in March 2026 on the same Ahrefs-tracked set of 74,752 websites, according to Ahrefs’ May 15, 2026 article.

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

Note: Included to size AI referrals against Google on the same panel.

+153.5%

Claude’s referral visits grew 153.5% month-over-month in March 2026 in Ahrefs’ panel (average growth rate 30.7% over the tracked period), according to Ahrefs’ May 15, 2026 post.

Source: Ahrefs

Data as of:

Note: Ahrefs attributes part of the spike to expanded web search capabilities.

Full source list

Deduplicated publishers used on this page, alphabetized.

Changelog: Updated 2026-07-18: initial publication of 10 sourced AI referral traffic statistics from Ahrefs research.

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← All AI search statistics · Related terms: AI Referral Traffic, Citation (AI answers)

AI Referral Traffic FAQ

  • Ahrefs has published several panel-based estimates over time: about 0.17% of average website traffic from AI chatbots in an early 2025 study, roughly 0.19% from a trio of major AI referrers mid-2025, and about 0.28% of traffic from all AI chatbots in March 2026 across ~75k tracked sites. Compare like with like—definitions and panels differ by post.