Artificial intelligence platforms are sending more and more visitors to media sites, even those trying to block their indexing bots. This trend raises questions about the future of web traffic and the role of traditional search engines.
Key takeaways:
- Monthly visits sent by ChatGPT to publishers rose from 435,000 in August 2024 to 3.5 million in January 2025.
- Despite this increase, visits from ChatGPT and Perplexity account for less than 0.1% of publishers' total traffic.
- Sites like The Atlantic or Forbes see a notable influx of AI traffic, sometimes even without a commercial agreement with OpenAI or Perplexity.
- Ineffective blocking? Some publishers who banned AI access via robots.txt still see traffic coming from these platforms.
A dramatic growth in AI traffic
AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity are generating a growing volume of traffic to media outlets. In just six months, visits sent by ChatGPT to 14 major news sites (such as The Guardian, The New York Times or Forbes) were multiplied by eight, reaching 3.5 million in January 2025.
At the same time, Perplexity also saw an increase, sending between 450,000 and 850,000 visits per month to those same publishers.
But beware: despite this explosion, the share of this traffic remains tiny compared to traditional search engines. For The New York Post, for example, the 760,000 visits generated by ChatGPT in January represent only 0.5% of its total traffic.
Who benefits the most from AI traffic?
Not all publications benefit equally from this trend. Among the big winners:
- The Atlantic : with 186,000 visits in January 2025, the publication sees more traffic from ChatGPT than from X (formerly Twitter).
- Forbes and The Guardian : these two outlets also record more1.6 million total visits in six months thanks to ChatGPT.
- The New York Post : with 760,000 visits in one monthit is one of the main beneficiaries.
Interesting fact: several of these sites have not signed any commercial agreement with OpenAI or Perplexity. That means their content is still used and referenced by these AIs, sometimes without explicit consent.
Blocking AIs… unsuccessfully?
Some publishers have tried to block AI access to their content via the file robots.txt – a normally effective method to prevent indexing by bots.
But this does not seem to completely deter AI platforms. For example, The New York Times, which banned the crawlers of ChatGPT and Perplexity, nevertheless received 240,600 visits from ChatGPT in January 2025.
This observation raises a major question: do AIs really respect the rules set by publishers?
Moreover, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, accusing them of using its content without permission to train their models. Yet this does not prevent it from being referenced by ChatGPT.
What future for search engine optimization in the face of AIs?
The increase in traffic from ChatGPT and Perplexity raises several issues for publishers and organic SEO:
- Increased dependence on AI platforms : if this traffic continues to increase, some publishers might seek to optimize their content for these tools, as they already do for Google.
- A threat to traditional search engines? : although Google still largely dominates, the rise of AIs as a source of information could change the landscape.
- A lack of transparency about the use of content : should publishers be compensated for the use of their articles by AIs?
For now, while AI traffic remains marginal, it is nevertheless growing rapidly. Media outlets would do well to closely monitor this trend…
The article “Traffic from ChatGPT and Perplexity is exploding: a windfall or a threat for the media?” was published on the site Abondance.
