AI vs Search Traffic Analysis
How much traffic ChatGPT and other AI platforms send to websites compared with Google and other search engines.
Based on data from our free Web Analytics
Updated: Oct 18, 2026
Absolute traffic trend
Total monthly traffic across the same 115,254 sites using Ahrefs Web Analytics. Tracking a fixed set of sites shows how overall traffic really changes over time.
Absolute traffic by channel
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All traffic sources comparison
Sep 2026Latest monthβs absolute traffic volumes and month-over-month percentage point (pp) changes for all tracked sources.
Traffic Channels
Traditional Search Engines
AI Assistants
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Traffic mix by site volume
Sep 2026How the channel mix shifts as sites grow from a few hundred to millions of monthly visitors. Sites are bucketed by total monthly visitors; for each band we average the per-site channel mix (Organic / Direct / Paid / AI / Other) so each bar still sums to 100%.
Month-over-month growth comparison
% change in visitors sent by each source: (This month β Last month) / Last month. Indicates how fast traffic is growing or declining.
| Period | ChatGPT | Bing | DuckDuckGo | Claude | Perplexity | Gemini | Yahoo! | Yandex | Naver | Baidu | Brave | Ecosia | AOL | Cα»c Cα»c | Meta AI | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2026 β Sep 2026 | β 2.7% | β 14.1% | β 2.1% | β 4.4% | β 17.2% | β 3.5% | β 40.4% | β 2.2% | β 3.0% | β 8.2% | β 5.3% | β 26.3% | β 1.5% | β 90.3% | β 13.8% | β 10.5% |
| Jul 2026 β Aug 2026 | β 7.2% | β 33.2% | β 0.8% | β 1.7% | β 11.1% | β 23.3% | β 7.4% | β 5.9% | β 10.6% | β 103.2% | β 57.9% | β 5.1% | β 0.9% | β 86.4% | β 9.5% | β 23.9% |
| Jun 2026 β Jul 2026 | β 1.1% | β 9.0% | β 1.0% | β 7.8% | β 25.0% | β 21.5% | β 14.5% | β 0.1% | β 0.5% | β 16.8% | β 12.4% | β 0.9% | β 1.4% | β 64.1% | β 7.8% | β 1.6% |
| May 2026 β Jun 2026 | β 4.0% | β 12.7% | β 1.8% | β 2.1% | 0.0% | β 31.4% | β 9.9% | β 5.9% | β 6.4% | β 4.4% | β 5.6% | β 0.1% | β 1.3% | β 32.9% | β 12.9% | β 32.7% |
| Apr 2026 β May 2026 | β 5.7% | β 59.4% | β 5.0% | β 4.2% | β 0.9% | β 18.0% | β 20.7% | β 2.3% | β 7.4% | β 13.9% | β 6.1% | β 11.6% | β 2.2% | β 28.4% | β 1.2% | β 0.5% |
| Mar 2026 β Apr 2026 | β 9.3% | β 12.0% | β 7.8% | β 8.4% | β 4.2% | β 11.0% | β 0.1% | β 8.9% | β 2.4% | β 7.6% | β 2.8% | β 3.6% | β 10.8% | β 22.8% | β 9.9% | β 28.5% |
| Feb 2026 β Mar 2026 | β 7.7% | β 0.4% | β 6.4% | β 4.5% | β 154.8% | β 1.2% | β 21.9% | β 4.9% | β 7.4% | β 28.9% | β 17.7% | β 10.7% | β 5.7% | β 90.2% | β 31.6% | β 14.5% |
| Jan 2026 β Feb 2026 | β 10.3% | β 14.3% | β 9.1% | β 25.1% | β 43.0% | β 16.4% | β 1.7% | β 11.6% | β 9.3% | β 12.6% | β 24.7% | β 13.0% | β 5.0% | β 14.4% | β 15.0% | β 27.4% |
| Dec 2025 β Jan 2026 | β 0.8% | β 9.8% | β 6.1% | β 7.0% | β 21.0% | β 13.4% | β 53.9% | β 2.3% | β 2.1% | β 0.5% | β 7.7% | β 1.2% | β 13.3% | β 15.7% | β 4.8% | β 24.7% |
| Nov 2025 β Dec 2025 | β 3.1% | β 11.1% | β 3.0% | β 14.7% | β 17.3% | β 18.1% | β 32.3% | β 1.9% | β 12.1% | β 11.3% | β 5.7% | β 1.1% | β 2.2% | β 33.5% | β 2.7% | β 0.3% |
| Oct 2025 β Nov 2025 | β 5.8% | β 0.1% | β 7.3% | β 3.5% | β 2.8% | β 4.8% | β 0.2% | β 5.7% | β 15.2% | β 0.9% | β 3.8% | β 1.2% | β 2.4% | β 14.6% | β 8.9% | β 2.2% |
| Sep 2025 β Oct 2025 | β 2.3% | β 5.5% | β 2.0% | β 4.6% | β 2.3% | β 4.1% | β 0.7% | β 0.2% | β 8.0% | β 4.0% | β 6.2% | β 8.7% | β 4.9% | β 35.1% | β 5.5% | β 11.8% |
| Aug 2025 β Sep 2025 | β 3.8% | β 12.1% | β 2.6% | β 0.9% | β 8.5% | β 25.2% | β 35.5% | 0.0% | β 2.4% | β 12.0% | β 3.9% | β 0.9% | β 2.8% | β 14.2% | β 14.9% | β 1.3% |
| Jul 2025 β Aug 2025 | β 4.6% | β 5.7% | β 2.6% | β 2.6% | β 10.1% | β 8.1% | β 13.1% | β 1.1% | β 0.4% | β 3.2% | β 5.8% | β 2.4% | β 2.8% | β 16.0% | β 9.5% | β 14.9% |
| Jun 2025 β Jul 2025 | β 1.5% | β 5.4% | β 3.2% | β 6.3% | β 5.6% | β 5.1% | β 1.3% | β 4.4% | β 2.3% | β 8.9% | β 3.4% | β 7.8% | β 4.3% | β 14.3% | β 15.6% | β 21.9% |
| May 2025 β Jun 2025 | β 6.8% | β 1.6% | β 4.2% | β 4.6% | β 108.7% | β 8.9% | β 2.6% | β 5.3% | β 23.2% | β 8.1% | β 19.3% | β 8.8% | β 4.9% | β 4.8% | β 16.3% | β 21.8% |
| Average | β 3.0% | β 5.5% | β 1.0% | β 0.3% | β 15.7% | β 8.1% | β 10.1% | β 1.3% | β 3.4% | β 5.0% | β 2.6% | β 3.3% | β 0.7% | β 1.2% | β 2.9% | β 1.3% |
Traffic share within different regions
Sep 2026Shows how web traffic is distributed across different continents and regions.
Traffic Share by Region
Month-over-month regional growth trends
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Traffic share across different industries
Sep 2026Breakdown of traffic sources across different industry sectors and verticals.
Key insights from the data
Bing grew visitors fastest among the larger sources (+2.1%)
Sep 2026: visitors from Bing grew 2.1%, the fastest among sources with at least 0.5% share. Its share rose from 1.11% to 1.13%. It stands out against a broadly softer market β 9 of 16 tracked sources declined.
Content-rich industries dominate referral traffic
News, Beauty and Fitness, Computers and Electronics lead traffic generation, representing prime opportunities for content optimization and SEO investment.
Google visitors fell in September
Visitors from Google changed β2.7% in Sep 2026; Bing +2.1%, DuckDuckGo β4.4%.
AI search sits at 0.43% of tracked traffic
Gemini grew fastest among AI assistants this month (+40.4%), while Claude (β17.2%), Meta AI (β10.5%) fell.
Google holds 23.96% traffic share
Googleβs share went from 24.24% to 23.96% (β0.28 pp). Its visitors fell 2.7%.
AI growth is spread across multiple platforms in September
Several AI assistants grew this month: Gemini (+40.4%), ChatGPT (+14.1%), Perplexity (+3.5%).
Strategic Marketing Implications:
Sep 2026 β Bing grew visitors fastest among the larger sources (+2.1%). Key priorities for marketers:
Optimize for ChatGPT Visitors from ChatGPT grew 14.1% this month; its share is 0.34%. Keep content structured, citable, and accessible to its crawler. It remains the largest AI referrer.
Watch Googleβs trajectory Visitors from Google fell 2.7%; its share is 23.96%. Keep investing in SEO, but expand beyond Google for resilience.
AI traffic is uneven Growth and decline are splitting across AI platforms this month β prioritize the ones actually sending you traffic.
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