According to a new report from TollBit, AI models like Perplexity and ChatGPT are failing to drive traffic towards websites even though the traffic on these platforms is increasing. The report says that the average click-through rate of Google is 8.63%, while AI chatbots and AI search engines have click-through rates of 0.33% and 0.74% respectively. This means that AI chatbots send 96% less referrals to websites than a traditional search. Similarly, there are 91% fewer referrals through AI search engines as compared to traditional search.
This means that publishers should beware because AI search isn't going to replace traditional search anytime soon. AI-generated answers are replacing direct website visits and this trend is going to rise. The report also found that AI scraping increased by 117% between Q3 and Q4 of 2024, while the average number of scrapers from AI bots per website in the fourth quarter of 2024 was 2 million. 1.89 million were also hidden AI scrapers. There was also a 40% decline from Q3 to Q4 2024 in AI bots ignoring robots.txt.
There was a 6,760.6% increase seen in ChatGPT-User bot activity and it had the largest AI bot share (15.6%). 12.44% AI bot share was from Bytespider while 11.34% share was from Meta-ExternalAgent. There was some disclosed scraping by PerplexityBot even though some sites had blocked it. A company called Chegg is also about to sue Google because it claims that Google AI Overview has decreased the revenue and traffic of its website. Google is also expanding AI Overview and they are now shown to users even if they aren't logged in.
Read next:
• AI Search Is Lying to You, And It’s Getting Worse
• New Report Found that Only 4% of the Global Populations Hold a Bitcoin
This means that publishers should beware because AI search isn't going to replace traditional search anytime soon. AI-generated answers are replacing direct website visits and this trend is going to rise. The report also found that AI scraping increased by 117% between Q3 and Q4 of 2024, while the average number of scrapers from AI bots per website in the fourth quarter of 2024 was 2 million. 1.89 million were also hidden AI scrapers. There was also a 40% decline from Q3 to Q4 2024 in AI bots ignoring robots.txt.
There was a 6,760.6% increase seen in ChatGPT-User bot activity and it had the largest AI bot share (15.6%). 12.44% AI bot share was from Bytespider while 11.34% share was from Meta-ExternalAgent. There was some disclosed scraping by PerplexityBot even though some sites had blocked it. A company called Chegg is also about to sue Google because it claims that Google AI Overview has decreased the revenue and traffic of its website. Google is also expanding AI Overview and they are now shown to users even if they aren't logged in.
Read next:
• AI Search Is Lying to You, And It’s Getting Worse
• New Report Found that Only 4% of the Global Populations Hold a Bitcoin
