What is the AI traffic source?
AI is a traffic source category alongside Internal, Direct, Search, Social and Links. It counts visitors who clicked through to your site from an AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot or Claude, plus other assistants like Meta AI, DeepSeek, Grok and Duck.ai. Chartbeat maintains the list of AI assistants in our backend and updates it as new ones appear.
Where does AI traffic appear?
Everywhere traffic sources are shown: the Unified Dashboard, Real-Time Dashboard, Historical Dashboard, Heads Up Display, Big Board, Conversion Dashboard, email reports, and the Real-Time and Historical APIs (where the referrer type is ai). You can filter any dashboard to AI traffic the same way you filter to Search or Social.
AI listed alongside the other traffic sources in the Unified Dashboard. The Unified Dashboard filtered to AI traffic.
Why does my AI traffic look low?
Treat the AI number as a floor. A visit is counted as AI only when the reader's browser reports the AI assistant as the referring site. Clicks from the AI assistants' websites usually do this. Clicks from inside AI mobile apps often arrive with no referrer information at all, so those visits are counted as Direct. The true share of AI-driven traffic is therefore at least what you see in the AI category, and likely higher.
Why do I see AI traffic in Real-Time but not in Historical for earlier dates?
AI traffic is classified from the day Chartbeat launched the category. Visits driven by AI traffic from before that date currently remain categorized as they were previously under Links in your historical data and reports.
Do search engines with AI answers count as AI?
No. Traffic from a search engine's results page, including AI-generated summaries on that page, is counted as Search. The AI category is for dedicated AI assistants that send readers to your articles.
Can I set a Spike Alert on AI traffic?
Not yet. Spike Alerts do not currently offer AI as an option.