AI traffic

Your analytics calls it direct. It was ChatGPT.

Answer engines send visitors without a referrer analytics understands, so the whole channel hides inside the direct bucket. AirPulse pulls it back out: which engine, which page, and whether those visitors behaved better than your search traffic.

The blind spot

You cannot fund a channel you cannot see.

Every quarter someone asks whether AI referrals are worth the investment, and the honest answer from a standard analytics install is that nobody knows. The traffic is there. It is just filed under direct, next to the bookmarks.

✓Engines pass little or no referrer, so the visit never gets attributed.
✓The pages engines send people to are rarely the pages you optimised.
✓AI visitors arrive later in the cycle, so raw session counts undersell them.
app.airpulse.ai · ai traffic
Sessions by enginelast 30 days
ChatGPT
Perplexity
Google AI
Gemini
Copilot
Time on page vs search+34%
Bounce vs search-11%
Four layers

Volume, then source, then destination, then worth

In that order, because each question is only answerable once the one before it is.

01

Attribution

Referrals from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI, separated out of the direct bucket where analytics leaves them. Sessions, trend, and share of total.

02

Engine breakdown

Which engines actually send people, and in what mix. The engine that cites you most is rarely the engine that sends the most traffic, and you should know which is which.

03

Landing pages

The pages engines send people to. Usually not the ones you optimised. This is the list that tells you where to put the demo CTA.

04

Quality signals

Time on page, pages per session and bounce for AI visitors against the rest of your traffic, so you can say whether the channel is worth the work.

What the numbers cannot tell you

An engine can cite you, answer the buyer's question completely, and send nobody. That is not a failure of attribution, it is the channel working as designed, and no traffic report will show it. Read AI Traffic next to visibility, never instead of it. One tells you whether you were named. The other tells you whether being named sent anyone.

FAQ

Questions teams ask first

Most answer engines send visitors without a referrer, or with one that analytics does not recognise as a search source. The visit lands in the direct bucket alongside bookmarks and pasted links, so the channel looks like it does not exist. AirPulse identifies the referral patterns each engine uses and pulls them back out.

Judge it on behaviour, not volume. AI referrals typically arrive later in the buying cycle, because the engine has already answered the early questions. That is why the quality signals sit next to the session count rather than on a separate screen. Low volume with strong intent is a different decision than low volume with high bounce.

Visibility tells you whether an engine names you. AI Traffic tells you whether being named sends anyone. Both matter, and they move independently. You can gain share of answer and see no traffic if the answer resolves the buyer's question without a click, which is itself useful to know.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overviews. Coverage tracks how each engine passes referral information, which changes as they ship. Where an engine gives us nothing to work with, we say so instead of guessing.

AirPulse reads from the analytics you already run rather than asking you to add another tag to every page.

Two things. Fix the pages engines already send people to, because that traffic is arriving whether or not the page is ready for it. Then look at what those pages have in common and write more of them. The list is the cheapest content brief you will get.

Find the traffic hiding in direct.

The free audit shows which engines name you today. AI Traffic shows what that is worth.