AI-powered traffic is increasing at a rapid pace, but is still far behind the sheer volume of Google Search traffic. According to data from Similarweb, AI referrals increased massively by 357% YoY, surpassing 1.13 billion in June of 2025. However, Google Search is still in the lead, generating 191 billion referrals in the same month.
AI Technology Is Restructuring Website Search
AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are already major generators of web traffic.
- AI referrals surged to a mere fraction of these numbers in mid June 2024.
- AI referrals surged to 1.13 billion by mid June 2025.
- ChatGPT alone was responsible for more than 80% of these referrals.
This illustrates a truly transformative change in the ways people use the web. While Google continues to lead the industry, AI is catching up quickly.
The Shift Is Impacting News and Media Organizations
The shift has the largest influence on the news and media segments. Publishers already anxious about losing Google traffic are primarily concerned about what lies ahead: A future they are dubbing “Google Zero” — a hypothetical day in time when Google will no longer drive traffic to their domains.
Key Stats:
- Since June 2024, AI referrals to News and Media sites increased by 770%.
- The traffic a few publishers receive is declining due to AI tools that summarize articles, also known as Overviews, since they lower click traffic.
For instance:
- When AI Overviews were integrated into Google results, a recent Pew research has shown that users only clicked links 8% of the time.
- Without the AI Summaries, the click rate would increase to 15%.
This, of course, is not the case for every news site. The NYT, for example, is known to block AI tools due to their ongoing lawsuit with OpenAI regarding the use of their content.
Top News Sites by AI Referrals in June 2025
As per Similarweb, the below-mentioned publishers topped the list of AI traffic referrals in the previous month.
- Yahoo – 2.3 million referrals
- Yahoo Japan – 1.9 million
- Reuters – 1.8 million
- The Guardian – 1.7 million
- India Times – 1.2 million
- Business Insider – 1.0 million
These publishers have adopted a more AI-centric policy by optimizing content or permitting unrestricted usage of their data.
AI-Driven Referrals in Other Industry Sectors
The impact of AI is not confined to the news sector only as traffic for e-commerce, technology, science, and business is also increasing, signaling a need for a paradigm shift.
E-commerce Leaders
- Amazon – 4.5 million referrals
- Etsy – 2.0 million
- eBay – 1.8 million
Tech and Social Media Leaders
- Google – 53.1 million
- Reddit – 11.1 million
- Facebook – 11.0 million
- GitHub – 7.4 million
- Microsoft – 5.1 million
- Canva – 5.0 million
- Instagram – 4.7 million
- LinkedIn – 4.4 million
- Bing – 3.1 million
- Pinterest – 2.5 million
Note: OpenAI.com was excluded from the study because most of its traffic was from ChatGPT itself.
AI Referral Leaders by Category
Here’s a snapshot of which sites topped AI referrals in their specific fields:
| Category | Top Site | AI Referrals in June |
| Video & Streaming | YouTube | 31.2M |
| Science & Research | ResearchGate | 3.6M |
| Government | Europa.eu | 992.9K |
| Real Estate | Zillow | 776.2K |
| Knowledge Sharing | Wikipedia | 10.8M |
| Health | NIH.gov | 5.2M |
| Finance | Investing.com | 1.2M |
| Retail | Home Depot | 1.2M |
| Travel | Kayak | 456.5K |
| Fashion | Zara | 325.6K |
What Counts as an “AI Referral”?
AI referrals include traffic from platforms like:
- ChatGPT
- Google Gemini
- Anthropic Claude
- Perplexity AI
- X Grok
- DeepSeek
- Liner
These tools often provide direct links to websites after summarizing or answering a user’s query.
Why This Is Important
AI is transforming how traffic flows across the internet. Although it still lags behind Google in sheer traffic numbers, the rate at which it grows is explosive. From the perspective of businesses and publishers, neglecting AI will mean losing out on a booming channel.
This shift is of utmost importance to:
- Maintaining the online visibility of publisher
- Clicks for e-commerce brands as they try to outbid one another
- Research and educational institutions trying to disseminate information
- Changing social media platforms who are trying to keep up with changing discovery trends
Key Highlights
- The number of AI referrals to websites reached 1.13 billion in June 2025, a 357% increase from the prior year.
- Google still leads with 191 billion referrals in the same time frame.
- News and media websites experienced the largest growth in AI referrals, up 770%.
- More than 80% of AI referrals to the top 1000 sites is driven by ChatGPT.
- Across multiple sectors, Amazon, YouTube, Reddit, and Wikipedia remain top performers.
- By not permitting AI access, publishers (like NYT) may be left behind.