AI referrals as organic traffic: A new traffic source or new bucketing is needed!

HubSpot Ideas
1

We really need the option to edit or have more web traffic source buckets, especially since AI refs. (not allowed to write this last word out on this HS community site) has risen significantly.

The principle is comparable to when search engines (namely Google) became such an important traffic source that it needed it’s own source/channel type. Imagine if google.com was just one of many in the ref. traffic bucket - it would be a reporting mess, and now this is the case for AI refs. like when SearchGPT is activated etc.

One approach is to include known AI (gen AI research and chatbots) domains like chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com as organic search where you should then have the option to split on medium or domain (eg. google.com, gemini.google.com, bing.com, perplexity.com etc. - which for at least Google would require differentiatiuon between subdomains).

The argument for this is that the nature of and user journey with refs. from these AI platforms is the same or very similar to organic search.

Another approach is to create a new source bucket (or channel, if you will) called organic ai similar to organic search and organic social. With this approach, we sould have more granular and accurate reports and a way to differ “organic ai” from organic search with the trade-off of having to combine two channels in order to report on what arguably could be bucketed as organic search.

One implication could be if/when the platforms shift domains or if eg. Gemini was integrated in Google Search (referring from Google instead of gemini.google.com), but that should be possible to adapt for. It could however be an argument for bucketing AI into organic search, but the option to differ seems preferable.

This AI traffic type is expected to increase even more, and it’s often a very relevant and high-performing traffic source as users search/prompt non-branded, often with a rather high commercial intent or interest.

Thanks in advance, and let mwe know if you have quetions!

Best regards

Severin Hygum

SEO Manager at Leapwork (enterprise test automation software)

2

Strongly agree with this idea! With organic traffic dropping due to increased one-click-searches, referred traffic from AI sources is becoming increasingly important. We need to be able to report on which pages and blogs are becoming popular with AI search engines, in order to optimize for them.
I’ve tried building reports and manually filtering by referrer (and listing the search engines appearing in my referrer list), so I can see the development over time. So far this isn’t possible with Hubspot’s reporting setup. I requested support on this topic and was told:
“While HubSpot’s reporting tools are powerful, the level of granular filtering you’re requesting – specifically, filtering a time-series chart by arbitrary, very specific referrer names like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Copilot within the standard custom report builder – is not directly possible with the current filtering options available for that report type. The custom report builder’s direct filters for time-series traffic data generally work with broader categories and predefined properties, rather than allowing filtering by every potential specific referrer domain.”
So currently there’s no way (even manually) to get the insights that we need on AI traffic sources. If Hubspot could group these sources into one AI bucket, that would be a dream!
Best,
Kirstin White
Growth Marketing Manager at Cleeng (Subscriber Retention Management software)

3

A simple report that can breakdown Referrals over time. Similar to our Sources breakdown, but let’s add a way to monitor and save specific Referrals with filters.

4

Hi @shygum! My name is Hallie and I’m a Program Manager on the CXM Team. I wanted to share this update with you that now includes AI Referrals in website traffic analytics. You can read a bit more about in our KB as well!

Based on what you described, it sounds like this may help solve for this need - but if it’s missing aspects you are looking for, please feel free to share that feedback here. :slightly_smiling_face: