Every month, someone sends me a screenshot from Google Analytics and asks: “We got 0.4% of our traffic from ChatGPT. Is that good, bad or normal?” It is a fair question. AI referral traffic is new, the numbers are small, and nobody wants to over-invest or under-invest because of a guess.
The good news is that we now have solid benchmarks. Ahrefs and SE Ranking have each measured AI referrals across tens of thousands of websites, and their numbers line up surprisingly well. We also have a new GA4 channel that makes this traffic easier to see, though not complete.
Let me walk you through how fast AI traffic has grown, what “normal” looks like for different sites, which assistants send the visits, and how to set a realistic target. I will keep it simple, and I will be honest about where the data is thin.
How fast has AI referral traffic grown since 2024?
In brief: very fast in percentage terms, from a very small base. Here are the main data points, in date order.
| Date published | Study | Sample | AI share of traffic |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 6, 2025 | Ahrefs AI traffic study | 3,000 sites | 0.12% of views; 63% of sites got at least one AI visit |
| March 26, 2025 | Ahrefs AI traffic research | ~35,000 sites | 0.1% of referral traffic |
| June 26, 2025 | Ahrefs: AI traffic up 9.7x | 81,947 sites | 0.25% of total traffic |
| June 18, 2026 | SE Ranking AI traffic study | 101,574 sites | 0.02% (2024), 0.24% (2025), 0.32% (Jan–Apr 2026) |
Ahrefs' June 2025 study found that AI traffic had grown about 9.7 times in a year, while the average site's search traffic fell about 21% over the same period. SE Ranking's 2026 study puts the growth from 2024 to 2026 at 16 times.
That sounds dramatic, and it is. But notice the last column. Even after all that growth, AI is still a fraction of one percent of the average site's visits. SE Ranking describes it as roughly 1 in 312 visits in 2026.
“AI traffic now represents 0.25% of a site's total traffic, on average.”
— Louise Linehan, Ahrefs, AI Traffic Has Increased 9.7x in the Past Year
What share of total traffic is normal for AI referrals today?
If you want one number to compare against, use this: about 0.25% to 0.35% of total traffic is average for 2025 to 2026. Here is how I would read your own figure against it.
- Below 0.1%: Below average. Check tracking first (see the undercounting section below), then check whether AI crawlers can reach your site.
- 0.1% to 0.4%: Around average. Most sites sit here.
- 0.4% to 1%: Above average. Your content is probably being cited for useful questions.
- Above 1%: Well above average. Double-check the data for spam or misattributed visits, then protect whatever is working.
These bands are my own reading of the averages, not official cut-offs. They also have a long tail at the top. In Ahrefs' February 2025 study, the top-performing sites got about 6% of their traffic from AI, and one site reached 18%. So “normal” covers a wide range.
For context, Google is still in a different league. In SE Ranking's 2026 data, organic search made up 42.75% of traffic, about 134 times the AI share. Ahrefs' June 2025 study found Google sent about 210 times more traffic than the three biggest AI platforms combined. I compare the two in more detail in ChatGPT vs Google: search volume vs the traffic they send.
Benchmarks by site size, country and industry
An average across 100,000 websites hides a lot. Your site size, market and industry all shift the number. Here is what the studies report.
| Segment | AI share of traffic | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Sites under 999 monthly visitors | 0.37% of views | Ahrefs, Feb 2025 |
| Sites with 1,000–9,999 visitors | 0.19% of views | Ahrefs, Feb 2025 |
| Sites over 10,000 visitors | 0.09% of views | Ahrefs, Feb 2025 |
| Sites under 10K visits vs over 1M | ~0.3% vs ~0.1% | Ahrefs, Mar 2025 |
| United States (2026) | 0.2958%, up 64% year on year | SE Ranking, Jun 2026 |
| European Union (2026) | 0.2689%, up 33% | SE Ranking, Jun 2026 |
| United Kingdom (2026) | 0.1565%, up 21% | SE Ranking, Jun 2026 |
Two patterns stand out. First, smaller sites get a bigger share of their traffic from AI, even though bigger sites get more AI visits in total. Second, the UK is well behind the US on this measure. A UK site at 0.2% is doing better than a US site at 0.2%.
What we know about industries (not much yet)
Industry data is the weakest part of the picture. Neither the 2025 Ahrefs growth study nor the 2026 SE Ranking study breaks results down by industry. The one breakdown I found is in Ahrefs' March 2025 research, where Business & Industrial led at 21.0%, roughly double Jobs & Education (10.5%) and Health (10.2%). Treat that as an early hint, not a benchmark.
Page type matters too. On Ahrefs' own site, free tools, product pages and the homepage took about 80% of AI search referrals (June 2025). A site with useful tools or clear product pages may sit above the average for that reason alone.
Which AI assistants send the most visits?
ChatGPT sends most AI referral traffic, but its lead has narrowed a little as Gemini and Claude grow. This is SE Ranking's split of AI referral traffic for January to April 2026.
| Assistant | Share of AI referral traffic (2026) | Share in 2025 | Trend noted |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 74.78% | 79.74% | Traffic up 27% year on year |
| Gemini | 11.56% | — | Up 231% (0.0114% to 0.0368% of total traffic) |
| Perplexity | 7.23% | — | Slight decline in average share |
| Copilot | 3.51% | — | Up 31% |
| Claude | 2.62% | — | Fast growth from a small base |
Source: SE Ranking, June 18, 2026. A dash means the study did not report that figure in the text I reviewed.
Ahrefs' mid-2025 data shows the same shape: ChatGPT sent more than 80% of AI traffic, and grew about 85% since January 2025. So if your GA4 shows ChatGPT at 70% to 85% of your AI visits, that is normal. If Perplexity or Gemini is your biggest source, your audience is unusual, and it is worth finding out why.
The mix also changes by country. In SE Ranking's data, ChatGPT's share was 85.28% in the UK but 71.33% in the US, where Gemini (12.87%) and Copilot (5.12%) had more weight.
Why AI traffic jumps around from month to month
Do not panic over one bad month. AI referrals are much more volatile than organic search, for reasons that have nothing to do with your site.
- Seasonality. SE Ranking found AI traffic grew through most of 2025, peaked in October 2025 at 0.3511%, and dipped over the holidays. In December 2025, ChatGPT traffic fell 19% and Perplexity 13%.
- Platform changes. In September 2025, AI referrals jumped 51% in a single month, with ChatGPT driving about 90% of that growth (SE Ranking).
- Plateaus. Ahrefs saw average AI traffic peak in April 2025, then dip in May and June, so growth levelled off for a while.
- Tracking outages. Ahrefs reported that Copilot referrals disappeared for several months around October 2024 before returning, likely because of a change in how its links passed referrer data.
My rule of thumb: compare three-month averages, not single months, and always check whether the drop shows up across all your sites or just one.
Why your AI numbers are probably undercounted
Every benchmark above counts only the AI visits analytics tools can see. Ahrefs calls its figures “the minimum amount of AI visitors a website receives.” The real number is higher, for several reasons.
Missing referrers. In AI Assistants Are Breaking Web Analytics (May 26, 2025), Patrick Stox tested nine assistants. Some links, such as Gemini Deep Research and DeepSeek's source links, sent no referrer, so the visit showed up as Direct. Perplexity's desktop app, Copilot in Windows and Grok also sent none in his tests.
“This invisible traffic problem comes from these systems stripping the referral value.”
— Patrick Stox, Ahrefs, AI Assistants Are Breaking Web Analytics and Hurting Their Future
Google's own AI features count as organic. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are reported as Organic Search, not AI. So part of your “Google” traffic is already AI-driven, and there is no clean way to split it out yet.
GA4's new channel has gaps. Google added an AI Assistant channel to GA4's Default Channel Group on May 13, 2026, according to TechWyse's report. Sessions from recognised AI referrers get the medium “ai-assistant.” Useful, but Search Engine Journal found that the recognised list has changed since launch and did not include Perplexity, so Perplexity visits can still sit in Referral. Only traffic after the rollout is tagged, so year-on-year comparisons mix old and new rules.
If you want a full set-up that catches these cases, follow my guide to tracking AI traffic in GA4. And if a lot of your traffic sits in a mystery bucket, read why GA4 shows (Unassigned) traffic.
How to compare your own site with these benchmarks
Here is the process I suggest. It takes about an hour the first time.
- Pick a clean window. Use the last three full months. Avoid a range that crosses your GA4 AI Assistant rollout date, or note it clearly.
- Collect AI sessions. Add the AI Assistant channel to referral sessions from AI domains GA4 does not yet recognise, such as perplexity.ai. Your GA4 referral report shows these.
- Calculate your share. AI sessions ÷ total sessions × 100.
- Pick the right benchmark. Use the closest match for site size and country from the tables above.
- Check the platform mix. Is ChatGPT 70% to 85% of your AI visits? If not, find out why.
- Look at quality. Compare engagement and conversions for AI visits against organic. My guide on AI traffic quality explains what to look at.
- Write down the result. Keep a simple monthly log so next quarter's comparison is quick.
A worked example with numbers
This is a hypothetical example. A UK online shop has 60,000 sessions a month. Over three months, GA4 shows 270 sessions in the AI Assistant channel and 45 Perplexity referrals in the Referral channel.
- AI sessions: 270 + 45 = 315 over three months, or 105 a month.
- AI share: 105 ÷ 60,000 × 100 = 0.175%.
- Benchmark: UK average 0.1565% (SE Ranking, 2026). For a site this size, Ahrefs' 2025 data suggests big sites sit lower than small ones.
- Verdict: slightly above average for its market and size, despite looking “tiny.”
Now say those 105 visits convert at 2.5% while organic converts at 1.6%. That is the more important finding. It means AI visits are worth more each, and the content they land on deserves attention.
Setting a realistic AI traffic target for the next 12 months
I suggest setting targets on share and conversions, not raw visits, because visits will rise anyway as more people use these tools.
| Where you are now | Sensible 12-month target | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Below 0.1% | Reach the average for your market (around 0.15% to 0.3%) | Fix tracking and crawler access, then build pages that answer specific questions |
| 0.1% to 0.4% | Grow share by a third to a half | Win citations on more questions; grow third-party mentions |
| Above 0.4% | Hold share; improve conversion rate of AI visits | Improve the pages AI visitors land on |
These targets are my own suggestions based on the growth rates above, not industry standards. Adjust them to your market.
Why focus on conversions? Because AI visitors can be unusually valuable. Ahrefs reported that AI search drove 12.1% of its sign-ups in a 30-day window while being about 0.5% of traffic, and that those visitors converted at roughly 23 times the rate of organic visitors (June 2025). That is one company, a software brand with a strong reputation, so do not expect the same. But it shows why a small channel can still matter. To make the most of those visits, our conversion optimisation work looks at the landing pages AI sends people to.
One honest caution. Ahrefs itself says AI is unlikely to become a big traffic source for most sites, and that it will not replace search. I agree. Set targets that treat AI as a growing extra channel. If you need to prove its impact, my guide to testing AI search incrementality shows how.
Questions site owners ask about AI referral traffic numbers
What percentage of website traffic comes from AI tools?
On average, well under 1%. SE Ranking measured 0.32% across 101,574 sites for January to April 2026, and Ahrefs measured 0.25% across 81,947 sites in mid-2025. A few sites see far more, up to 6% or higher.
Is 1% AI referral traffic good?
Yes, by current benchmarks 1% is roughly three to four times the average. Check first that it is real (not spam or internal visits), then look at whether those visitors convert.
Which AI assistant sends the most traffic?
ChatGPT, by a wide margin. SE Ranking's 2026 data puts it at 74.78% of AI referral traffic, followed by Gemini (11.56%) and Perplexity (7.23%).
Why does GA4 show less AI traffic than I expected?
Some assistants and apps strip the referrer, so visits land in Direct. GA4's AI Assistant channel also does not cover every assistant, and AI Overviews and AI Mode clicks are counted as Organic Search.
Will AI traffic replace my Google traffic?
Not on current numbers. Google still sends many times more visits. In SE Ranking's 2026 data, organic search was about 134 times the AI share. Plan for AI as an addition, not a replacement.
How often should I compare my AI traffic with benchmarks?
Monthly is enough. Compare a rolling three-month average, because single months jump around with platform changes, seasonality and tracking issues.
How we help you turn AI referral benchmarks into a plan
To sum it up: AI referrals have grown many times over since 2024, but the average site still gets only about 0.25% to 0.35% of its traffic from AI. Small sites, US sites and sites with useful tools tend to sit higher. ChatGPT sends most of it. And all these numbers are minimums, because analytics cannot see every AI visit.
If your number is in the normal range, you are not behind. If it is below, start with tracking and crawler access before anything else. Either way, the real prize is the quality of these visits, not the count. For more numbers on AI search, see my roundup of AI SEO statistics, and to see how smaller sites can win citations, read whether AI favours big brands less than Google.
If you would like us to audit your AI traffic and set targets with you, look at our SEO services or get a free quote.
Further reading on AI referral traffic benchmarks
- Proving AI Search Impact With Holdout and Pre/Post Tests
- ChatGPT vs Google: Search Volume vs the Traffic They Actually Send
- Do Backlinks Still Matter for AI Visibility?
Sources for these AI referral traffic benchmarks
- Ahrefs: AI Traffic Has Increased 9.7x in the Past Year (June 26, 2025)
- Ahrefs: AI traffic research, ~35,000 sites (March 26, 2025)
- Ahrefs: AI traffic study, 3,000 sites (February 6, 2025)
- Ahrefs: AI search traffic and conversions at Ahrefs (June 16, 2025)
- Ahrefs: AI search traffic by page type (June 16, 2025)
- Ahrefs: AI Assistants Are Breaking Web Analytics (May 26, 2025)
- SE Ranking: AI traffic grew 16x from 2024 to 2026 (June 18, 2026)
- Search Engine Journal: GA4's AI Assistant channel undercounts your AI traffic (2026)
- TechWyse: Google Analytics adds native AI Assistant channel (May 15, 2026)
