The Top 50 Sites Getting Traffic from AI Chatbots

YouTube got the most AI referrals in May. Amazon and The Guardian were winners in their categories.

ChatGPT and other major AI platforms are sharing more of their traffic with other sites, incorporating search functionality that goes beyond providing summary answers and linking to their sources. For the first time, Similarweb is sharing a ranking of websites by the traffic they receive from AI answer engines, derived from data generated by the Similarweb AI Chatbot Traffic tool.

This report is a spin-off of research we did for the editors at Barron’s to show how the nature of search and information discovery is changing in the era of AI. Their cover story report covered both changes embedded in Google search (AI Overviews and the new AI Mode) as well as the rise of ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms, including Google’s own Gemini chatbot. Barron’s used Similarweb data on the top 1,000 websites, how much search traffic they have been receiving over time, and the referrals they are getting from AI platforms.

In this article, we’re focusing on traffic originating from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com, claude.ai, chat.deepseek.com, grok.com, and getliner.com – a total of 1.3 billion referral visits in May, based on the 1,000 domain sample.

Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a listing of the top 50 domains benefiting from AI traffic. In addition to the ranking, we’re providing details on the content AI engines linked to most frequently, plus sample prompts that drove users to those pages.

Summarize with ChatGPT | Google AI | Perplexity | Grok

Key takeaways on AI traffic leaders

• YouTube received the most AI Chatbot Traffic referrals, 37.9 million (M) visits. For purposes of this analysis, we excluded traffic to openai.com and google.com sites, which get a lot of referrals from ChatGPT and Gemini. YouTube is a Google-owned site, but got about 75% of the referrals we detected from ChatGPT.
• Facebook, with 10.9M AI visits and Wikipedia with 10.1M AI visits, got the #2 and #3 spots, closely matching their overall traffic rankings, where Facebook ranks right below YouTube and Wikipedia is also in the top 10.
• Amazon’s US website is the ecommerce platform that ranked highest, at #9, with 4.6M AI visits, although some of those were related to its Amazon Web Services cloud computing business rather than online retail visits. Within that category, Amazon was followed by #17 Etsy, with 2.3M visits, and #24 Walmart with 1.8M visits.
• Among news websites, the ones receiving the most traffic were #27 The Guardian with 1.7M AI visits and Reuters with 1.5 million AI visits.

Here’s a snapshot of the top 10 AI traffic recipients:

The Top 3: YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia

The top of the list mirrors the top of the website traffic rankings, except that Wikipedia (a primary source of generative AI training data) outranks some social sites like YouTube.

#1 YouTube, 37.9M AI visits

Using Similarweb’s AI Chatbot Traffic tool, we can see examples of popular pages receiving AI visits, where often ChatGPT represents 100% of the referrals detected in the Similarweb data model. YouTube Music is an exception, getting about 25% of its traffic from Google Gemini.

Drilling down to the prompts driving traffic to specific videos or channels, we can see that the Learn English with TV Series channel owes its popularity to prompts like, “How can I improve my English listening skills using TV shows?”, “What are some effective methods to learn English through movies?” and “¿Cómo puedo mejorar mi comprensión auditiva en inglés viendo series de televisión?”

#2 Facebook (facebook.com), 10.9M AI visits

Facebook receives a lot of AI chatbot traffic, although rather than personal profiles we see most of that going to help pages like facebook.com/business/help driven by prompts like “How can I contact Facebook Business Support for assistance with my ad account?” and “What steps should I follow to report a problem with my Facebook business page?”

#3 Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), 10.1M AI visits

Generative AI poses a potential threat to the future of Wikipedia, having digested the open-source site’s data as training for its AI model so that it can now spit out summaries that for some users may eliminate the need to visit the site itself. Yet the AI answer engines do reference Wikipedia content in their answers, and some of those links produce clicks – resulting in about 10.1 million visits to the site in May.

Reflecting the interest many AI chatbot users have in the underlying technology, one of the most popular articles was a list of data sets for machine learning research, associated with prompts like “Can you provide a comprehensive list of datasets available for machine learning research?” and “Where can I find datasets categorized by type for machine learning applications?”

Another was on President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, his budget proposal, linked to prompts like “How does the One Big Beautiful Bill Act impact Medicaid and SNAP programs?” and “What are the projected economic effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act?”

AI traffic to ecommerce websites

#9 Amazon (amazon.com), 4.6M visits

The page from Amazon’s main website getting the most traffic from AI search engines was aws.amazon.com, the home page of Amazon Web Services, driven by prompts like, “What is cloud computing and how can it benefit my business?” and “¿Cuáles son los principales servicios que ofrece Amazon Web Services?” The page for becoming an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner is just a little farther down the list.

The first retail product we see attracting traffic is a paperback book, Geo-Economics: The Interplay between Geopolitics, Economics, and Investments by Joachim Klement, in answer to prompts like, “How do geopolitical events influence global financial markets?” “What are the key factors at the intersection of geopolitics and economics affecting investments?” and “Can you recommend comprehensive resources on geo-economics for investors?”

#17 Etsy (etsy.com), 2.3M AI visits

Etsy gets referrals from Perplexity, Grok, and Claude, as well as ChatGPT.

Top Prompt Examples Leading to etsy.com include “Where can I find unique handmade gifts online?” and a Spanish language version of the same question, “¿Dónde puedo comprar artículos vintage y hechos a mano en línea?”

AI traffic to science websites

ChatGPT and its competitors also link to authoritative sources of scientific and medical information.

#8 The US National Institutes of Health (nih.gov), 5.4M AI visits

The top landing page is for the National Eye Institute (nei.nih.gov), driven by prompts like “What are the latest treatments for age-related macular degeneration?” “How can I participate in clinical trials for eye diseases?” and “¿Cuáles son los síntomas comunes de la retinopatía diabética?”

#13 Research Gate (researchgate.net), 3.8M AI visits and #19 Science Direct (sciencedirect.com), 2.2M AI visits

Two academic research portals also show up prominently on our list, pointing to article listings like Using synthetic data to benchmark correction methods for low-cost air quality sensor networks were sample prompts included, “What are effective methods for calibrating low-cost air quality sensors?” and “How can synthetic data be utilized to evaluate air quality sensor correction techniques?”

AI traffic to publishing websites

Publishers have a fraught relationship with generative AI, with some like the New York Times suing ChatGPT over copyright infringement. Media websites supported by advertising fear AI platforms will satisfy users with a summary of their articles without ever sending readers to the original story. Those who are actively blocking AI access to their content are getting fewer referrals as a result. Of the rest, a few publishers seem to have a lead on the rest in attracting traffic from generative AI models.

#27 The Guardian (theguardian.com), 1.7M AI-driven visits

Not counting Wikipedia, The Guardian is the news publisher that is in the lead so far. Recent stories receiving chatbot referrals include a May 10 story on military conflict between India and Pakistan driven by prompts like, “Can you provide live updates on the recent missile attacks between India and Pakistan?” and “How has the international community responded to the recent India-Pakistan tensions?”

# 30 Reuters (reuters.com), 1.5M AI-driven visits

Not far behind The Guardian, Reuters scored with its account of the Marcos government in the Philippines signing a new budget into law. Related prompts: “What are the key allocations in the Philippines’ 2025 national budget signed by President Marcos?” and “How does the 2025 budget signed by President Marcos aim to support economic growth and reduce poverty in the Philippines?”

#33 Investing.com with 1.3M AI-driven visits

Among financial news publications, Investing.com placed its Economic Calendar page in response to prompts like “What are the upcoming economic events that could impact the financial markets?” and “Can you provide a schedule of major economic indicators being released this week?”

The Top 50 Websites Getting Traffic From AI Chatbots

Here are the top 50 sites ranked by AI traffic.

The Similarweb Press Office can pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

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by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".