693.4%
year-over-year growth in traffic from generative AI tools to US retail sites from 1 November to 31 December 2025
AI referral traffic statistics 2026
5 figures from Adobe, Ahrefs, TechCrunch. Each links to where it was published. Checked 2026-10-15 by Shruti Kaushik.
How much website traffic comes from ChatGPT and other AI assistants?
693.4% year-over-year growth in traffic from generative AI tools to US retail sites from 1 November to 31 December 2025 (Adobe, 7 Jan 2026).
31%
higher conversion for AI referrals than for other traffic sources over the 2025 holiday season
120%
growth in AI-driven traffic to tech and software sites in the 2025 holiday season, against 539% for travel
0.25%
of an average site's total traffic came from AI, and ChatGPT sent more than 80% of it, across 81,947 websites
More than 25 million
ChatGPT referrals reached news sites in 2025, up from just under 1 million from January to May 2024, per Similarweb
These figures come from AI Search Statistics 2026: ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Clicks, which puts them in context.
More AI search statistics
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