AI and website analytics

Whether or not you choose to use AI technology, users are probably being driven to your website from various AI platforms. Recently, the Measurement & Analytics team in University Relations explored how AI is affecting users’ engagement with our websites by tracking website traffic sourced from AI platforms. This work helps  establish benchmarks for future analysis related to AI sourced traffic.

We’re closely tracking the new OpenAI feature that may replace your favorite search engine. With the use of their web search icon, each search will include a list of sources. In addition, Google Chrome now includes four extensions that connect your searches with ChatGPT’s new SearchGPT.

Trends We Are Seeing

Quantity: We looked at the traffic coming from known AI platforms over this year to date and over the last quarter. Overall, we are seeing a significant  jump in AI-sourced traffic since August. The percentage of views coming from AI platforms is still minimal, in most cases to the hundredths of a percentage point. However, the jump in traffic when compared with the previous quarter tends to be well over 100%.

Subject matter: Because the traffic is specific to an AI platform prompt, most of this traffic is coming to our news articles rather than our homepage. Surprisingly, schools or colleges websites saw more traffic geared to prospective students than to any other topics.

Engagement: While the engagement rate for the AI-referred users is higher than for overall users, ranging from 86% to 41% across our sample sites, the number of pages viewed is lower.

Location: In most cases, around 25% of the sessions are coming from the United States.

Learn about how the University is taking the lead with AI and read more about OpenAI’s new search feature, including when you can expect to see it on your ChatGPT interactions.

If you have any questions or would like assistance with monitoring your AI-sourced web traffic, contact the Measurement & Analytics team via email.