> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.theaitracker.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# AI traffic

> How AI-referred sessions are identified, and what each section of the Traffic page tells you.

Visibility tells you that you appeared in an answer. **Traffic** tells you
whether anyone clicked. The page combines your Google Analytics, Search Console
and Bing Webmaster data with the answers AI Tracker collected, so the two sit
side by side.

It needs at least one connected integration — see
[Integrations](/integrations/overview).

## What counts as an AI visit

A session is counted as AI-referred when either of these is true:

* Google Analytics classified it as coming from an **AI assistant** (its native
  AI channel), or
* the referring site is a known AI assistant: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude,
  Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Grok, Meta AI, Mistral, You.com, Poe or
  Phind.

The second rule exists because Analytics' own list is narrower than reality —
Perplexity in particular is not classified as AI by Google, so relying on the
native channel alone undercounts.

<Warning>
  **Two known blind spots**, and they matter when reconciling numbers:

  * Clicks from **Google AI Overviews** arrive labelled as ordinary Google
    organic search. They are indistinguishable from a normal search click, so
    they cannot be split out.
  * AI visits that arrive **without a referrer** — someone copying a link out
    of a chat — land in Direct, like any other untagged visit.

  AI traffic is therefore a floor, not a ceiling. The trend is more reliable
  than the absolute number.
</Warning>

## What the page shows

| Section | What it answers |
| - | - |
| **Stat cards** | AI sessions and their trend, AI share of all traffic, engagement rate against your site average, and unique visitors |
| **AI traffic over time** | Which assistants send you traffic, charted individually, with the long tail bucketed as "Other" |
| **AI vs other sources** | Your top channels with AI referrals overlaid, so you can size AI against organic, direct and paid |
| **Traffic by page** | The landing pages AI traffic actually arrives on — usually a much shorter list than your organic landing pages |
| **Google search performance** | Clicks, impressions and average position from Search Console |
| **Bing and Copilot** | Bing clicks and impressions, plus index health: pages indexed, crawl errors, and pages blocked by robots rules |
| **Pages cited in AI answers** | Pages on your domain that were cited as sources in the answers AI Tracker collected, joined to their search performance |
| **AI opportunity queries** | Non-brand queries where you get plenty of impressions but almost no clicks |

<Note>
  The AI referrals line on **AI vs other sources** is an overlay, not an extra
  slice. Those sessions are already counted inside one of the channels
  (normally Referral) — the line is there for comparison, and adding it to the
  channel totals would double-count.
</Note>

### Pages cited in AI answers

This is the most directly actionable section on the page. It lists the URLs on
your domain that AI answers actually cited, matched up with how those same
pages perform in Google and Bing.

A page cited often in AI answers but ranking poorly in search is the clearest
content signal AI Tracker produces: the AI platforms already consider it
authoritative on the subject.

### AI opportunity queries

Non-brand queries with high impressions and a click-through rate under 1%, over
a fixed 90-day window — questions you are already visible for but not chosen
for. The same list feeds prompt suggestions, because a query people ask and
don't click you on is exactly the kind of question worth tracking in AI
answers.

<Note>
  This section stays on its own 90-day window and ignores the page's date
  filter. Impression and click-through thresholds are meaningless over seven
  days.
</Note>

## Dates and history

The date filter (12 months, 90 days, 30 days, 7 days) drives every section
except opportunity queries.

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Data is refreshed nightly, not on page load">
    Metrics are collected once a night rather than fetched while you wait,
    which is what keeps the date filter instant.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Recent days can still change">
    Each nightly refresh re-fetches the last several days, because Search
    Console reports roughly two days behind. Yesterday's numbers may firm up
    over the following days — this is upstream behaviour, not a correction.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Connecting a source backfills about a year">
    Connecting Analytics, Search Console or Bing pulls in roughly 400 days of
    history within minutes, so a newly connected brand has a usable trend
    immediately. Reconnecting — switching to a different property, say — re-runs
    the backfill and replaces what was there.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="History outlives the upstream retention">
    Bing's API only returns about the last six months. Because AI Tracker keeps
    its own copy, your Bing history here keeps growing past that point.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="A brand-new campaign renders before its first refresh">
    Until the first nightly collection has run, the page falls back to querying
    your connected accounts directly, so it isn't blank while you wait.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## If the numbers look wrong

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="AI sessions look far too low">
    Expected, up to a point — see the blind spots above. Also check that the
    correct Analytics property is connected on **Integrations**; a property
    covering a different subdomain is a common cause.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Traffic is attributed to the wrong day">
    Analytics reports in the property's own timezone. Confirm the property
    timezone matches the one on your brand profile.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Bing sections are empty">
    Bing Webmaster Tools is a separate connection from Google — see
    [Bing Webmaster Tools](/integrations/bing-webmaster).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Cited-pages columns are missing for an engine">
    The Google and Bing columns only render for engines you have connected.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>


This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.