> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.heypharos.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# AI traffic: measure referrals from AI platforms

> Track visitors who arrive from AI platform responses. View traffic by source, landing page, and geography, with period-over-period comparisons.

AI traffic measures the visits your website receives from people who clicked a link inside an AI platform response — for example, when Perplexity cites your site and a user follows that link. This is distinct from the Visibility Score, which measures how often your brand is mentioned in AI responses regardless of whether a link is present. AI traffic quantifies the downstream web visits that those citations produce.

<Warning>
  AI traffic data requires the **Pharos Pixel** to be installed on your website. Without the pixel, no referral data is collected and all charts on this page will show empty states. See the [pixel integration guide](/integrations/pixel) for installation instructions.
</Warning>

***

## Traffic modes

Use the mode selector in the page header to filter traffic by visitor type:

| Mode            | What it shows                                                     |
| --------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| All             | Human referrals and AI agent visits combined                      |
| Human referrals | Visits from people who clicked a link in an AI platform interface |
| AI agents       | Automated crawls and requests from AI bots and agents             |

Switch modes to understand whether the volume you are seeing is human-driven engagement or automated agent activity.

***

## Date range and granularity

Select a date window (last 7, 14, 30, or 90 days) from the date picker. When viewing the AI Referrals tab, you can also choose the chart granularity: **Daily**, **Weekly**, or **Monthly**. Switching to weekly or monthly smooths out day-to-day variance and makes trends easier to read over longer windows.

***

## Tabs

<Tabs>
  <Tab title="AI referrals">
    The AI Referrals tab is the primary traffic view. It includes:

    **KPI summary cards** showing totals for the selected period:

    * Total visits from AI platforms
    * Unique visitors
    * Average time on page
    * Conversion rate (if conversion events are tracked via the pixel)
    * Average pages per session
    * Average session duration

    Each KPI card also shows a period-over-period comparison against the equivalent previous window (for example, if you select 30 days, the comparison is against the prior 30 days).

    **Traffic trend chart** — a stacked area chart breaking daily, weekly, or monthly visits by AI platform source: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Other AI.

    **Provider breakdown** — a ranked list of AI platforms by visit volume, so you can see which platform sends you the most traffic.

    **Top landing pages** — the pages on your site that AI-referred visitors land on most often, with visit count, average time on page, and average scroll depth for each.

    **Geographic breakdown** — the countries where your AI-referred visitors are located.

    **Device breakdown** — the proportion of visits from desktop, mobile, and tablet.

    <Tip>
      Compare the Top Landing Pages here against the top cited pages in the Citations tab of the Dashboard. If certain pages earn many citations but few actual clicks, the AI platform may be mentioning your site without linking it — a sign to request inclusion in more citations.
    </Tip>
  </Tab>

  <Tab title="Search Console">
    The Search Console tab shows organic search performance data for your domain, pulled from your connected Google Search Console property. This provides context for how your traditional search presence compares to your AI referral traffic.

    To use this tab, connect your Google Search Console account in **Settings → Integrations**. See the [Search Console integration guide](/integrations/search-console) for setup steps.
  </Tab>

  <Tab title="Google Analytics">
    The Google Analytics tab surfaces session and engagement data from your connected GA4 property for the selected date range. Viewing GA4 data alongside your AI referral traffic helps you understand the full picture of how AI-referred visitors behave compared to visitors from other channels.

    To use this tab, connect your Google Analytics account in **Settings → Integrations**. See the [Google Analytics integration guide](/integrations/google-analytics) for setup steps.
  </Tab>
</Tabs>

***

## How AI traffic attribution works

The Pharos Pixel captures the HTTP referrer header on each page load. When a visitor arrives at your site with a referrer URL matching a known AI platform domain (such as `chat.openai.com`, `perplexity.ai`, or `claude.ai`), Pharos logs that visit as an AI referral and attributes it to the corresponding platform.

AI agent visits are identified by user-agent strings that match known AI crawler and agent signatures. These are classified separately from human referrals so you can distinguish genuine user engagement from automated traffic.

<Info>
  The Pharos Pixel is a lightweight JavaScript snippet. It does not use cookies and does not collect personally identifiable information. See the [pixel integration guide](/integrations/pixel) for the full data collection specification.
</Info>