Glossary
AI Referral Traffic
Human visitors who reach your site by clicking a link inside an AI engine's answer, tracked by the engine's own referrer host.
Definition
When an AI engine cites you and a reader clicks through, that visit arrives as a session carrying a referrer from the engine's domain, such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai, or gemini.google.com. AI referral traffic is a distinct acquisition channel, separate from Google organic and from direct traffic, and it is the outcome side of AI visibility: proof that a citation produced not just a mention but an actual visit. It is typically under-counted, because some engines open links without passing a referrer, so those clicks fall into "direct." Treat what you measure as a lower bound, and attribute conversions to it to see the revenue AI is driving.
Example
A B2B SaaS site sees 1,800 sessions and 63 conversions in a month from chatgpt.com, and can finally put a revenue figure on the visits ChatGPT sends.
Related terms
AI Search
The shift from typing keywords into a search box to asking AI assistants conversational questions.
AI Engine
A general term for the AI assistants and answer products that synthesize responses from multiple sources: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode.
Citation
A specific URL or source that an AI engine links to when supporting a claim in its answer.
Visibility (brand visibility)
The share of analysed AI answers that name your brand.
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