People are looking for new ways to find information. While Google is leading in all searches, many new tools like ChatGPT are creating new ways for web searches. To help marketers understand this change, Ahref has created a new way tracker that will help compare traffic collected by Google and ChatGPT.
This is great news for businesses and professional marketers because now we can see how much the traffic is coming from AI tools compared to the old search engine. Let’s know a little more about it.
What is Ahrefs’ new Tracker ?
Ahrefs, which is a leading SEO platform, has released a public dashboard to analyse the traffic coming from Google and ChatGPT. It collects data from websites that use Ahrefs web analytics and is updated on a monthly basis.
This tracker shows:
- How much traffic comes from Google web.
- How much traffic comes from ChatGPT.
- How both sources are growing over the time.
It gives marketers, website owners and SEO professionals clear information of ​​how AI search is affecting web traffic.
What numbers say about Google vs ChatGPT
In July 2025:
The Share of Google’s total traffic was 41.9%.
The share of ChatGPT’s traffic was only 0.19%.
At first look, ChatGPT’s market share appears to be very small in comparison to Google’s overwhelming domination. However, the exciting part comes in the growth tale. Google’s traffic increased by just 1.4% in July, whereas ChatGPT’s increased by 5.3%.
The roles were inverted in the previous month, with ChatGPT growing just 1.6% and Google growing 6.8%.
ChatGPT traffic is increasing by 3.8 times faster than Google’s traffic found by Ahrefs while comparing their overall growth rate. Although Google continues to be the original source of traffic, ChatGPT is starting to establish itself as an authentic source of traffic rather than just a trend.
(Source Search Engine Journal)
How does the Tracker work?
This tracker has its benefits and limitations, just like any other analytics tools:
Regular Dataset: Ahrefs, to ensure accurate data comparisons only counts websites that were present all three months.
Tracking based on referral: It relies on (how the signal that indicates a visitor’s origin came from). however some AI apps and browsers may hide the data, meaning ChatGPTs traffic may be underreported.
Why is it important for businesses ?
So why should marketers, business owners and SEO professionals care about this new data? Here are some reasons for this:
- Google is still your main source of traffic, Google is the foundation of digital marketing. SEO is not changing at all.
- ChatGPT is emerging as a new source of traffic. ChatGPT traffic is growing faster than Google’s traffic. AI web search could become even more important in the coming times.
- Content optimization will need more to improve, simple optimization for Google may no longer be enough. Businesses and professionals should start focusing on AI friendly content that must be clear, structured, and informative which is likely to be influenced by AI assistants.
- There are some flaws in the analytics. Businesses may get more AI driven traffic because some AI tools do not provide referral traffic. It is important to consider the current data as an estimate .
How to Get Prepared as a Marketer
Follow these simple steps to ensure that your company is prepared for this new era of AI driven search.
- Maintain a high Google SEO score.
Google is still the biggest source of web traffic. So, keep focus and continue using the best SEO practices of keyword optimization, technical SEO, backlinks, and user experience.
- Try out some AI visibility experiments.
Use clear subheadings, organize your content in a Q&A format, and give brief, authentic responses. This increases the chances of ChatGPT and other AI models referencing your website
- Monitor AI referrals individually
Use Ahrefs’ new tracker alongside your own data to understand how traffic is shifting. This will assist you to identify trends early.
