Absolute Traffic Trend
Absolute traffic trend shows the monthly total traffic of 74,752 sites that joined Ahrefs Web Analytics by June 2025, tracking the same fixed cohort each month to show overall traffic changes over time.
All Traffic Sources Comparison
Comprehensive comparison of all traffic sources showing traffic share and growth trends
Latest month's absolute traffic volumes and month-over-month percentage point changes for all tracked sources.
Traffic Channels
Traditional Search Engines
AI Assistants
Traffic Share by Category
Aggregated view of traffic sources grouped into major categories: Traditional Search, AI Search, and channel types
Traffic distribution across major categories over time.
These six categories overlap and do not add up to 100%: Search and AI Search are based on the referring source, while Unknown, Paid, Direct and Social are channel types. For Sep 2026 they total 103.0%. Search covers Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo!, Yandex, Naver, Baidu, Brave, Ecosia, AOL, Coccoc.
Traffic Mix by Site Volume
Sites bucketed by total monthly visitors. For each band we average the per-site channel mix (Organic / Direct / Paid / AI / Other) so each bar still sums to 100%.
How the channel mix shifts as sites grow from a few hundred to millions of monthly visitors. Single month (Sep 2026), not a trend. AI share is printed above each bar, since at under 1% it is too thin to read off the axis.
Site count per band
Traffic Share by Source
All traffic sources displayed on the same percentage scale for direct comparison
Traffic share percentages on the same scale
Month-over-Month Growth Comparison
% change in visitors sent by each source: (This month − Last month) / Last month. Indicates how fast traffic is growing or declining.
% change in visitors sent by each source: (This month − Last month) / Last month. Indicates how fast traffic is growing or declining.
| Period |
Google
Goo
|
ChatGPT
Cha
|
Bing
Bin
|
DuckDuckGo
Duc
|
Claude
Cla
|
Perplexity
Per
|
Gemini
Gem
|
Yahoo
Yah
|
Yandex
Yan
|
Naver
Nav
|
Baidu
Bai
|
Brave
Bra
|
Ecosia
Eco
|
AOL
AOL
|
Cốc Cốc
Cốc
|
Meta AI
Met
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2026 → Sep 2026 | 2.7% | 14.1% | 2.1% | 4.4% | 17.2% | 3.5% | 40.4% | 2.2% | 3.0% | 8.2% | 5.3% | 26.3% | 1.5% | 90.3% | 13.8% | 10.5% |
| Jul 2026 → Aug 2026 | 7.2% | 33.2% | 0.8% | 1.7% | 11.1% | 23.3% | 7.4% | 5.9% | 10.6% | 103.2% | 57.9% | 5.1% | 0.9% | 86.4% | 9.5% | 23.9% |
| Jun 2026 → Jul 2026 | 1.1% | 9.0% | 1.0% | 7.8% | 25.0% | 21.5% | 14.5% | 0.1% | 0.5% | 16.8% | 12.4% | 0.9% | 1.4% | 64.1% | 7.8% | 1.6% |
| May 2026 → Jun 2026 | 4.0% | 12.7% | 1.8% | 2.1% | — | 31.4% | 9.9% | 5.9% | 6.4% | 4.4% | 5.6% | 0.1% | 1.3% | 32.9% | 12.9% | 32.7% |
| Apr 2026 → May 2026 | 5.7% | 59.4% | 5.0% | 4.2% | 0.9% | 18.0% | 20.7% | 2.3% | 7.4% | 13.9% | 6.1% | 11.6% | 2.2% | 28.4% | 1.2% | 0.5% |
| Mar 2026 → Apr 2026 | 9.3% | 12.0% | 7.8% | 8.4% | 4.2% | 11.0% | 0.1% | 8.9% | 2.4% | 7.6% | 2.8% | 3.6% | 10.8% | 22.8% | 9.9% | 28.5% |
| Feb 2026 → Mar 2026 | 7.7% | 0.4% | 6.4% | 4.5% | 154.8% | 1.2% | 21.9% | 4.9% | 7.4% | 28.9% | 17.7% | 10.7% | 5.7% | 90.2% | 31.6% | 14.5% |
| Jan 2026 → Feb 2026 | 10.3% | 14.3% | 9.1% | 25.1% | 43.0% | 16.4% | 1.7% | 11.6% | 9.3% | 12.6% | 24.7% | 13.0% | 5.0% | 14.4% | 15.0% | 27.4% |
| Dec 2025 → Jan 2026 | 0.8% | 9.8% | 6.1% | 7.0% | 21.0% | 13.4% | 53.9% | 2.3% | 2.1% | 0.5% | 7.7% | 1.2% | 13.3% | 15.7% | 4.8% | 24.7% |
| Nov 2025 → Dec 2025 | 3.1% | 11.1% | 3.0% | 14.7% | 17.3% | 18.1% | 32.3% | 1.9% | 12.1% | 11.3% | 5.7% | 1.1% | 2.2% | 33.5% | 2.7% | 0.3% |
| Oct 2025 → Nov 2025 | 5.8% | 0.1% | 7.3% | 3.5% | 2.8% | 4.8% | 0.2% | 5.7% | 15.2% | 0.9% | 3.8% | 1.2% | 2.4% | 14.6% | 8.9% | 2.2% |
| Sep 2025 → Oct 2025 | 2.3% | 5.5% | 2.0% | 4.6% | 2.3% | 4.1% | 0.7% | 0.2% | 8.0% | 4.0% | 6.2% | 8.7% | 4.9% | 35.1% | 5.5% | 11.8% |
| Aug 2025 → Sep 2025 | 3.8% | 12.1% | 2.6% | 0.9% | 8.5% | 25.2% | 35.5% | — | 2.4% | 12.0% | 3.9% | 0.9% | 2.8% | 14.2% | 14.9% | 1.3% |
| Jul 2025 → Aug 2025 | 4.6% | 5.7% | 2.6% | 2.6% | 10.1% | 8.1% | 13.1% | 1.1% | 0.4% | 3.2% | 5.8% | 2.4% | 2.8% | 16.0% | 9.5% | 14.9% |
| Jun 2025 → Jul 2025 | 1.5% | 5.4% | 3.2% | 6.3% | 5.6% | 5.1% | 1.3% | 4.4% | 2.3% | 8.9% | 3.4% | 7.8% | 4.3% | 14.3% | 15.6% | 21.9% |
| May 2025 → Jun 2025 | 6.8% | 1.6% | 4.2% | 4.6% | 108.7% | 8.9% | 2.6% | 5.3% | 23.2% | 8.1% | 19.3% | 8.8% | 4.9% | 4.8% | 16.3% | 21.8% |
| Average | 3.0% | 5.5% | 1.0% | 0.3% | 15.7% | 8.1% | 10.1% | 1.3% | 3.4% | 5.0% | 2.6% | 3.3% | 0.7% | 1.2% | 2.9% | 1.3% |
Traffic share within different regions
Shows how web traffic is distributed across different continents and regions
Asia
Africa
Europe
North America
South America
Oceania
Traffic Share by Region
Stacked bar chart showing the distribution of each traffic source across geographic regions
Month-over-Month Regional Growth Trends
Displays month-over-month growth rates for each traffic source by geographic region
Traffic Share Across Different Industries
Breakdown of traffic sources across different industry sectors and verticals
News
Beauty And Fitness
Computers And Electronics
Finance
Home And Garden
People And Society
Law And Government
Travel And Transportation
Food And Drink
Jobs And Education
Autos And Vehicles
Sports
Real Estate
Pets And Animals
Arts And Entertainment
Internet And Telecom
Shopping
Business And Industrial
Health
Hobbies And Leisure
Adult
Online Communities
Science
Games
Reference
Books And Literature
Key Insights from the Data
Important observations and trends extracted from the traffic data analysis
Search referral traffic posts a broad pullback
Eight of the 15 tracked sources declined month-over-month in September, with Google falling -2.7% to a 23.96% share and DuckDuckGo sliding -4.4%. The overall tone of the month is contraction, not growth, across traditional search.
Google remains dominant but continues to lose ground
At 23.96% share, Google is far and away the largest single referral source in the dataset. However, a -2.7% month-over-month decline signals a persistent softening trend that marketers relying heavily on organic search cannot afford to ignore.
Bing is the standout gainer among material search sources
Bing grew +2.1% to reach a 1.13% share, making it the only search engine with meaningful traffic volume to post a positive month. While its absolute share remains modest, the directional contrast with Google and Yahoo (-2.2%) is notable.
ChatGPT leads AI referrals with real momentum
ChatGPT grew +14.1% and accounts for the entirety of the 0.34% total AI share this month, making it the only AI assistant with a material traffic footprint. Gemini (+40.4%) and Perplexity (+3.5%) are growing but remain immaterial at 0.02% and 0.01% share respectively.
AI assistants collectively hold just 0.34% of tracked referral traffic
Despite headline growth rates across several AI platforms, the combined AI share sits at 0.34% — meaning traditional search still accounts for the overwhelming majority of tracked referral volume. AI is a channel to build toward, not one to rebalance a strategy around today.
News, Beauty and Fitness, and Computers and Electronics lead referral traffic by industry
These three verticals top the charts for referral traffic generation across the 115,252 consistently tracked sites, suggesting that content-dense, high-frequency publishing models continue to capture disproportionate search and AI referral share.
Strategic Marketing Implications:
September 2026 is a month of broad search softness — Google slid -2.7%, most sources declined, and AI referrals remain real but marginal at 0.34% share, making channel diversification the defining priority.
- • Diversify beyond Google now, not later: Google's -2.7% decline to 23.96% share continues a softening pattern. Bing's +2.1% gain is a signal worth acting on — audit whether your technical SEO and structured data are fully optimized for Bing, which is increasingly the search engine gaining ground when Google slips.
- • Treat ChatGPT as your primary AI referral channel: ChatGPT grew +14.1% and represents the full 0.34% AI share on its own. Prioritize making your content crawlable, citable, and structured — clear headings, authoritative sourcing, and direct answers — to capture referrals from the one AI assistant actually sending material traffic.
- • Invest in content formats that serve top-performing verticals: News, Beauty and Fitness, and Computers and Electronics dominate referral traffic. If your site operates in or adjacent to these categories, high-frequency, well-structured publishing is your strongest lever for maintaining share as traditional search volumes soften.
- • Monitor AI share growth rates, but do not reallocate budget on them yet: Gemini's +40.4% and ChatGPT's +14.1% growth are directionally encouraging, but with total AI share at 0.34%, these are signals to track and prepare for — not justification for pulling resources from channels that still drive the vast majority of referral volume.