Data from Similarweb shows that referrals from OpenAI’s ChatGPT to 14 leading news publishers grew from roughly 435,000 monthly visits in August to 3.5 million in January.
Despite this jump, ChatGPT contributed less than 0.1% of these sites’ total visits.
Here are more highlights from a report compiled by Press Gazette.
Key Findings
- Big Growth, Small Share: The total desktop and mobile traffic sent by ChatGPT rose eightfold in six months but remains a fraction of the publishers’ overall traffic.
- Top Beneficiary: In January, the New York Post received 760,000 visits from ChatGPT, representing 0.5% of its 143.5 million monthly visits.
- Other Standouts: The Guardian and Forbes also saw sizable gains, with 730,000 and 560,000 referrals, respectively.
Several of the publishers studied have partnerships with OpenAI, which may ensure more frequent citations of their content.
Perplexity vs. ChatGPT
- January Leaders (Perplexity): The New York Times (146,000 visits), CNN (139,000), and India Times (117,000).
- Combined Six-Month Tally (ChatGPT): Forbes led with 1.7 million total referrals, followed by the New York Post and The Guardian at 1.6 million.
ChatGPT’s referral rise aligns with OpenAI’s introduction of web search, an optional mode that cites and links to publishers.
Another AI-powered service, Perplexity, has delivered between 450,000 and 850,000 visits per month to the same 14 publishers but has not had consistent month-over-month growth.
Looking Ahead
As user bases for ChatGPT and Perplexity grow, publishers are watching to see if AI will take traffic from websites or if more citations will lead to increased clicks.
While AI search traffic is rising, its overall impact is still limited, and publishers remain reliant on traditional search engines for most of their traffic.
Featured Image: Algi Febri Sugita/Shutterstock
