AI sends just 1 in 312 visits, but the share is growing fast

Traffic from AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini still makes up a very small share, but that share is growing sharply. That is the finding of a study from the analytics company SE Ranking.

The study covers 101,574 websites in 250 countries and spans January 2025 to April 2026, with 2024 as a reference point. AI traffic refers to visits where a user clicks a link in an AI assistant, an answer engine or a generative search experience.

From 0.02 to 0.32 percent

According to SE Ranking, AI platforms accounted for 0.02% of all website traffic in 2024, 0.24% in 2025 and 0.32% in 2026. That works out to roughly one in 312 visits and a 16-fold increase in two years. The share peaked in October 2025 at 0.3511%.

ChatGPT accounts for by far the most AI traffic in 2026, at 74.78%. Next come Gemini at 11.56%, Perplexity at 7.23%, Copilot at 3.51% and Claude at 2.62%.

ChatGPT's share has fallen, however, from 79.74% in 2025. Its own traffic still grew 27% year over year, while Gemini grew 231% and Claude 320%.

SE Ranking also reports that AI visitors spend 67.7% more time on sites than visitors from regular organic search. The figures come from SE Ranking's own panel of websites and may not reflect all industries and regions.

New channel in Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which many companies use to measure visits, has a channel called AI Assistant. According to Google's help page, it groups traffic from sources including ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok. Google's own AI Overviews and AI Mode are not included.

Traffic lands in the channel when the referrer matches a list of AI assistants. According to the industry blog SEO Sherpa, the channel was introduced on May 13, 2026, and older data has not been reclassified but still sits under Referral. The date does not appear on Google's help page. It is unclear whether Perplexity is included in the channel.

The measurement is incomplete

SEO Sherpa points out that when an AI uses content in an answer without the user clicking through, no session is recorded in GA4. In addition, many AI visits are sent without information about where they come from, so they are counted as direct traffic. The blog puts the figure at 20-40% and cites an analysis that found 70.6%. The basis for those figures has not been examined.

SEO Sherpa therefore concludes that the new channel shows a minimum of AI traffic, not a ceiling. For a business, that means AI traffic is likely larger than the numbers in GA4 show.