When the web was young, publishers obsessed over bookmarks and homepage visits. Then came the age of search, when search engines like Google and Bing became the front door, the first place people went to access the rest of the internet. Social media soon followed, rewriting discovery with the share button and the trending feed.
Now a new front door is emerging: AI assistants and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Perplexity are driving referral traffic and serving as a first stop in many users’ website journey.
To better understand this shift in web traffic, we analyzed Microsoft Clarity’s platform data, covering over 1,200 publisher and news sites over the past eight months. We found that traffic from AI-driven platforms grew by a blistering +155.6%. That surge dwarfs the steady gains from Search (+24.0%), Social (+21.5%), and Direct (+14.9%).
But despite all this growth, AI referrals still account for less than 1% of overall traffic. The flood has not arrived, but the currents are shifting fast.
AI Traffic Converts, Traditional Channels Lag Behind
If traffic is the quantity side of the equation, conversions are the quality test. And on this front, the story gets more interesting.
After analyzing one month of data and using smart events for conversion detection, we found that traffic from LLMs converted at rates traditional channels could only envy:
| Conversion Rates by Channel | ||||
| LLMs | Search | Direct | Social | |
| Sign-Up CTR | 1.66% | 0.15% | 0.13% | 0.46% |
| Subscription CTR | 1.34% | 0.55% | 0.41% | 0.37% |
AI traffic consistently delivered more engaged, action-taking visitors. So while LLM referral traffic may be comparatively small, the readers LLMs send are more likely to convert.
Digging deeper, the conversion rates of referral traffic vary widely between platforms. To illustrate this range, we compared each LLM’s referral conversion rate to direct and search traffic.
Referrals from Copilot had the highest subscription conversion rate, converting at 17x the rate of direct and 15x the rate of search traffic. Perplexity came in second with 7x the conversion rate of both channels, and Gemini rounded out the top three at 4x and 3x the rate of direct and search, respectively. Conversely, traffic from Perplexity and Gemini had the highest conversion rates for sign-ups.
Compared to these surging AI-driven channels, the conversion rates of traditional channels look sluggish. Direct traffic, for instance, converted just 0.41% of users into subscribers.
The Majority of Sites Are Already Converting AI Traffic
Out of the 1,277 domains we analyzed, more than half (52%) already converted traffic from AI models into sign-ups or subscriptions in the past month. That means the AI trend is not confined to a handful of tech-savvy publishers; it’s pervasive across all industries. The takeaway is clear: AI referrals are not yet a tidal wave, but they are already sending disproportionately high-quality readers. Publishers who ignore this shift risk being left behind when the share of AI traffic grows.
AI Traffic Is Here. Are You Ready?
Every major shift in digital publishing looked small before it looked inevitable. In the mid-2000s, social traffic barely registered until one day referrals from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were impossible to ignore.
Today, AI traffic is that small but fast-growing category. It makes up less than 1% of the pie but is expanding faster than any other slice and bringing users who are more likely to sign up, subscribe, and stay.
AI traffic is arriving quietly, but quickly. Publishers who move now can influence how these readers discover content, engage with it, and convert. Making sense of it all requires a mix of strategy, testing, and the right tracking tools to see what works.
Many analytics platforms, including Microsoft Clarity, are now tracking AI referrals, usually by analyzing referral sources or filtering channel data. Additionally, Clarity separates this traffic into two groups: AI Platform (organic visits from AI chat tools) and Paid AI Platform (ad-driven visits within AI experiences). This breakdown makes it easier to compare performance across organic and paid AI channels without additional setup.
Beyond big picture traffic and conversion data, it’s important to go deeper and use behavioral analytics to see how users from LLMs interact with your site. With Clarity, you can compare the behavior of users from AI referrals to other channels to see if they scroll farther, convert faster, or start deeper in your funnel.
With this level of insight, publishers can tailor their experiences with mid-funnel CTAs, contextual product teasers, or instant signup prompts, while prioritizing investments in the content AI platforms surface most frequently.
AI isn’t on the horizon; it’s already sending traffic your way. The real question is: are you measuring it?