Google vs ChatGPT: Ahrefs’ New Tracker Reveals Surprising Referral Trends

Ahrefs just rolled out a brand-new monthly dashboard that lets you compare referral traffic from ChatGPT and Google side by side. It’s one of the first real attempts to measure AI-driven search as a referral channel — and the results may surprise you.

The Key Findings

• Google still dominates traffic: In July, Google accounted for 41.9% of all traffic in the dataset.

• ChatGPT is now measurable: While smaller, ChatGPT drove 0.19% of referrals.

• Growth rates tell the real story: Month over month, Google referrals grew 1.4%, while ChatGPT referrals climbed 5.3%.

• Steeper upward curve: The month prior, Google jumped 6.8%, while ChatGPT rose only 1.6%. But now, the script is flipping.

The Ahrefs team sums it up clearly:
👉 ChatGPT is growing 3.8× faster than Google.

How Ahrefs Tracks This

To keep data clean, Ahrefs only includes websites that show up consistently across all tracked months. This ensures we’re comparing apples to apples.

But here’s the catch: these numbers only reflect referrer-based visits. Some AI tools strip or obscure referrer data, which means actual AI-driven visits could be higher than reported.

Interestingly, this aligns closely with Ahrefs’ earlier research — which pegged AI referrals at ~0.17% of overall traffic.

What It Means for Marketers

• Google isn’t going anywhere — it still sends the lion’s share of traffic.

• AI is already sending visitors — small but measurable, and growing fast.

• The takeaway: SEO is expanding. It’s not just about Google anymore — you’ll want to optimize for AI Overviews and answer engines too.

Wondering how AI search is impacting your traffic? Our new tracker is your wake-up call. Get a free consultation on your current AI Overview (AIO) status—just fill out our contact form to get started!