"News and Media sites receive the highest total pageviews from AI platforms, but the lowest engagement per individual article. This suggests AI is surfacing many different news articles for factchecking and context, but readers aren't staying to explore - they're getting their answer and leaving."
"ChatGPT has increased more than 200% in pageviews year-over-year, but when we look at the percentage of pageviews coming from AI platforms in the Chartbeat network, we see that chatbots still account for less than 1% of pageviews."
"When we break down traffic by channel, the majority have seen stable traffic levels over the past two years with the exception of one: search. Pageviews from Google Search fell 34% from December 2024 to December 2025 and pageviews from Google Discover fell 16% during the same timeframe."
AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude are increasingly used for information retrieval, but users rarely click through to linked sources. While ChatGPT pageviews increased over 200% year-over-year, AI platforms collectively account for less than 1% of pageviews across publisher networks. Home and garden sites benefit most from AI referrals, while news and media sites receive high AI traffic but with low engagement per article, indicating users obtain answers without exploring further. Overall publisher pageviews declined 6% in 2025 compared to 2024, within normal fluctuation ranges. However, search engine traffic has dropped significantly, with Google Search referrals falling 34% and Google Discover falling 16% year-over-year.
#ai-referral-traffic #publisher-analytics #search-engine-decline #user-engagement #content-distribution
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