AI Referral Traffic Surges 357% - June 2024 Data

The Rise of AI-Driven Web Traffic

While Google Search remains the primary source of website traffic, referrals originating from AI platforms are experiencing substantial growth. Recent data indicates a significant increase in traffic driven by artificial intelligence.

Growth in AI Referrals

According to market intelligence from Similarweb, AI platforms generated over 1.13 billion referrals to the top 1,000 websites globally in June. This represents a remarkable 357% increase compared to June of the previous year.

Despite this surge, Google Search continues to dominate, delivering 191 billion referrals to these same websites during the same timeframe in June.

Impact on News and Media

The news and media sector is particularly focused on this trend. Many online publishers are anticipating a potential decline in traffic from Google, a scenario they refer to as “Google Zero,” where Google ceases directing traffic to their sites.

Recent reports, including one from The Wall Street Journal, suggest that AI overviews may be negatively impacting traffic to news websites. A Pew Research Center study revealed that AI Overviews appeared in 18% of 69,000 Google searches conducted by 900 U.S. users.

When AI summaries were presented, users clicked on links 8% of the time. Conversely, link click-through rates nearly doubled to 15% when no AI summary was displayed.

Specific Site Performance

Similarweb’s data shows a 770% increase in AI referrals to news and media websites since June of the prior year. Website accessibility for AI platforms also influences rankings; sites like The New York Times, which restrict AI access due to legal disputes with OpenAI, may see different results.

In the news media landscape, Yahoo led in AI referrals with 2.3 million in June, followed by Yahoo Japan (1.9M), Reuters (1.8M), The Guardian (1.7M), India Times (1.2M), and Business Insider (1.0M).

Methodology and AI Platform Breakdown

Similarweb defines AI referrals as web traffic originating from AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, Perplexity, Claude, and Liner. ChatGPT is the dominant force, responsible for over 80% of AI referrals to the top 1,000 domains.

The analysis extended beyond news to include categories like e-commerce, science, education, technology, arts, entertainment, and business.

E-commerce and Tech/Social Media Referrals

Within the e-commerce sector, Amazon received the most AI referrals in June (4.5M), followed by Etsy (2.0M) and eBay (1.8M).

Among leading tech and social media sites, Google topped the list with 53.1 million referrals. Other prominent sites included Reddit (11.1M), Facebook (11.0M), Github (7.4M), Microsoft (5.1M), Canva (5.0M), Instagram (4.7M), LinkedIn (4.4M), Bing (3.1M), and Pinterest (2.5M).

Data Exclusions and Other Top Sites

The OpenAI website was excluded from the analysis due to the high volume of referrals originating from its own ChatGPT service.

Across all other domains, leading sites by AI referrals included YouTube (31.2M), Research Gate (3.6M), Zillow (776.2K), Europa.eu (992.9K), Wikipedia (10.8M), NIH.gov (5.2M), Investing.com (1.2M), Home Depot (1.2M), Kayak (456.5K), and Zara (325.6K).