Measure before you believe anybody's benchmark. In Google Analytics, look at session source and referrer for chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com, gemini.google.com and similar hosts. Those appear as referrals when somebody clicks a link inside an AI answer. Build a segment or a saved exploration so you can watch the trend each month instead of digging it out by hand every time somebody asks you about AI.
Two things will skew that picture low. A lot of AI usage ends without any click, because the person got what they needed from the answer and then called you or searched your name directly. That lands in your reports as direct or branded search traffic, not as an AI referral. And Google AI Overviews traffic is reported as ordinary Google organic, so you cannot separate it cleanly from regular search clicks at all.
What owners consistently report is that the clicks they do get from AI tools arrive unusually qualified, because the person has already been pre sold by the answer they just read. That is why the channel deserves attention even at a small share of sessions. Just hold the numbers loosely. Anyone quoting you a precise industry percentage for AI referral traffic is guessing more than they are letting on.
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