cite-met

    AI search traffic analytics: people from AI answers, and the crawlers behind them

    AI search traffic analytics separates visits that arrive from AI answers (chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com, claude.ai) from Google and direct traffic, and shows the pages those visitors read. For sites cite-met hosts, it also shows the AI crawlers that fetched each page, which browser analytics never records.

    Measure: traffic, AI-crawler intelligence, and a live AI-visibility score.
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    The question it answers

    How many people reach my site from ChatGPT and other AI answers, and which pages are the AI crawlers reading?

    What it is

    AI search sends you two different kinds of traffic. The first is people: someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot or Claude a question, sees your page cited, and clicks through. Those visits arrive with the assistant as the referrer, and cite-met shows them as traffic sources and, from the Local plan, as the entry point of each visitor journey. The second is crawlers: OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot building search indexes, ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and Perplexity-User fetching a page because someone asked, and training crawlers such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot. cite-met reads those requests at the edge for the sites it hosts and charts them by crawler and page.

    Traffic analytics with Human, SEO, and AEO visitor types charted separately

    Traffic analytics with Human, SEO, and AEO visitor types charted separately (example data)

    Visits from AI answers

    ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude as traffic sources, next to Google and direct.

    AI crawler fetches by page

    Search crawlers, user-triggered fetchers and training crawlers, for sites we host.

    Where AI visitors go next

    From the Local plan, journeys show what people from AI answers read after they land.

    A concrete example

    In the example project above, 2,525 visits in seven days split into 1,563 Human, 574 SEO and 388 AEO. The Human stream is where people from AI answers show up, by source, next to Google and direct visits, while the AEO stream counts AI crawler fetches by crawler. Read together, they show whether the pages AI crawlers fetch are the same pages that people from AI answers land on. The figures are example data.

    Why it matters

    Google Analytics 4 now groups visits from AI assistants in its AI Assistant channel, but it can't see AI crawlers at all, and an assistant that sends no referrer shows up as Direct. Clicks from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode count as Google search, not as an AI source. Seeing the people and the crawlers in one place tells you whether AI search can read your pages and whether it is sending you anyone, without stitching two tools together.

    More of the platform

    CiteMET Score →

    A live A+ to F grade for how readable your site is to search and AI crawlers, with a list of what to fix.

    AI-Crawler (AEO) Analytics →

    See which AI crawlers fetched which pages, next to human and search traffic.

    Visitor Journeys →

    Sessionized navigation paths: where visits enter, how deep they go, where they stall.

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    AI Search Traffic Analytics: FAQ

    What counts as AI search traffic?
    Two things, and they should be measured apart. Visits are people who click a link in an AI answer and land on your site. Fetches are requests from AI crawlers and from the fetchers an assistant sends when someone asks about your page. Visits show whether AI search is sending you customers; fetches show whether AI search can read you at all.
    Why does some ChatGPT traffic show up as Direct?
    When an AI app opens a link without passing a referrer, analytics tools can't tell where the visit came from, so it lands in Direct. Desktop browsers usually pass chatgpt.com as the referrer; some apps don't. A rise in Direct visits to deep pages, such as a specific guide or product page, is often AI traffic that lost its referrer.
    Does it show clicks from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode?
    Those clicks come from Google search, so they count as Google traffic, not as an AI assistant. Google's Search Console includes them in its Web search results. cite-met's Search Console view (from the Local plan) puts that data next to your traffic.
    Can it tell me whether an AI answer cited my page?
    No. A visit shows someone clicked through and a fetch shows a crawler asked for a page; neither proves an answer used it. For citations, use the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools and the Generative AI performance report in Google Search Console, or ask a fixed set of buyer questions on a schedule and record who gets named.