AI Traffic

Proof it converts to visitors.

Connect Google Analytics and Search Console and overlay real AI-referral sessions on your visibility score: visibility you can tie to traffic.

7-day trial, no card

AI referrals · last 60 days 4.8% of all visitors
AI sessions
1,492 +18%
Share of all visits
4.8%
Top assistant
ChatGPT 826
GSC clicks
1,284 +6%
Referrals by assistant
ChatGPT
826
Perplexity
331
Claude
149
Copilot
83
Gemini
66

Grok and Meta Spark folded in: 1,492 sessions total.

Search Console overlay
AI visibility GSC clicks
Matched on GA4 session source, nightly. GA4 + SEARCH CONSOLE

AI referrals, split by assistant

Sessions from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini, pulled from your GA4 property and charted against your visibility score.

Search Console alongside

GSC clicks and impressions on the same timeline, so classic search and AI answers are read together, not in separate tabs.

AI share of all visitors

One number for how much of your traffic AI already sends: the stat that makes the case for taking AI visibility seriously.

Methodology

How AI referral traffic is measured.

Every session in GA4 carries a source. Sessions whose source is an assistant's own domain (chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai and four others) are counted as that assistant's referrals. Nothing is modelled or extrapolated.

One honest limit: clicks from Google AI Overviews arrive as ordinary search traffic, so no tool can count them separately. Referenced doesn't estimate. You get the numbers that are real: assistant referrals and crawler visits.

Sessions by assistant · 30 days vs previous 30
ChatGPT
412 sess. +18%
Perplexity
168 sess. +9%
Claude
74 sess. +22%
Copilot
41 sess. −4%
Gemini
33 sess. +6%
Grok
12 sess. +11%
Meta Spark
6 sess. 0%
Matched on GA4 session source, nightly. 746 sessions

Which bots are reading you.

Crawling comes before quoting. Nine named assistant crawlers, counted per day with the paths they hit, so you can see a new page being picked up, or ignored.

Crawler hits · 30 days From your logs
GPTBot
1,284 hits
OAI-SearchBot
902 hits
ClaudeBot
611 hits
PerplexityBot
448 hits
Google-Extended
377 hits
Googlebot
2,140 hits
Bingbot
806 hits
Amazonbot
191 hits
CCBot
88 hits
Bots we do not recognise yet are ignored rather than rejected. 9 tracked

The paths they keep coming back for

Usually your best-cited pages. When a new page appears here, a citation tends to follow within a fortnight.

Turn untracked queries into prompts in Opportunities.

Top crawled paths Hits
/guides/choosing-your-first-ultra-shoe 1,204
/products/speedcross-6 986
/blog/how-deep-should-your-lugs-be 612
/returns 2

Traffic questions, answered.

What GA4 and Search Console show once they're connected, and where the crawler numbers come from.

Do I need GA4 connected? +

For the traffic charts, yes: Referenced reads AI-referral sessions and Search Console clicks and impressions straight from your connected Google account, nothing is estimated. Citation and visibility tracking work without it; only the traffic side needs Google connected.

How is AI referral traffic measured? +

Every session in GA4 carries a source. A session whose source is an assistant's own domain (chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai and others) counts as that assistant's referral. Nothing is modelled or extrapolated.

Does this count Google AI Overview clicks separately? +

No, and no analytics tool can: AI Overview clicks arrive in GA4 as ordinary Google search traffic, with no separate source. Referenced doesn't estimate a number for it. You get the assistant referrals and crawler hits that are real.

Where do the crawler numbers come from? +

From your own server logs, via a small WordPress plugin that ships bot hits (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot and more) to Referenced. Bots it doesn't recognise yet are ignored rather than rejected, so a newer crawler doesn't break anything.

Do citations turn into traffic? +

Not automatically: a citation is a link an engine reached for, not a guaranteed click. Referenced overlays AI-referral sessions on your visibility score so you can see whether the citations are converting, rather than assuming they do.

See which pages AI cites, before you write another one.

Free 7-day trial, no card: every answer is stored with its sources.