AI sends two kinds of visitor to a website. AI Traffic shows both, on two tabs:
- Visitors are people. When an AI assistant answers a question, it often links to the pages it used, and some of the people reading the answer follow those links. This tab shows how many reach your website, which assistant sent them, and the pages they arrive on.
- Crawlers are the automated readers AI companies send to collect your pages. That tab has its own page.
Each tab is connected on its own, and either works without the other. The rest of this page is about Visitors.
AI Traffic is included on Plus, Pro and Agency, and during a Pro trial.
Where the figures come from
brandflare can't see visits to your website on its own. Your Google Analytics can: it records where every visit came from, including links in AI answers. So this section reads your own Google Analytics, once you connect it.
It needs a Google Analytics 4 property on your website, and a Google login that can open it.
Connecting it
An owner or admin of the workspace connects it, from the Visitors tab of the brand's AI Traffic:
- Sign in with Google. Use the login that can open this website's Google Analytics. brandflare asks only to read your Analytics. It can't change anything in it, and it reads nothing else in your Google account.
- Pick your website. If the login can see more than one property, choose the one that measures this brand's website. With one property there is nothing to choose.
- See AI visits. The last 90 days appear straight away. After that the page updates every morning.
On Google's screen, leave the box for Google Analytics ticked. Without it Google passes on no access, and the page asks you to try again.
Picked the wrong property? Use a different property, on the Connection card at the foot of the page, takes you back to the list without signing in to Google again.
A brand's markets share one connection, because they are one website.
What you see
Visits from AI. Visits in the last 30 days, up to yesterday, that began with a link in an AI assistant's answer, and how that compares with the 30 days before. A visit is what Google Analytics calls a session.
Share of all visits. Those visits as a share of every visit to your website in the same 30 days.
Visits that stayed. The share that lasted more than ten seconds, viewed a second page, or did something you count as a key event in Google Analytics. Google calls these engaged sessions. If any led to a key event, the count is shown.
Visits per day, one line per assistant, in the same colours the engines have everywhere else in the product.
Which assistants send them. Each assistant with its visits, beside how often it names you when brandflare asks it your questions. This is the comparison the page is for:
- Named often, few visits. The assistant mentions you without linking to you, or links to someone else's page about you. Sources shows which pages it cites instead.
- Visits, but rarely named. People are arriving from questions you don't track. The pages they arrive on say what those questions were about, and are worth adding to Questions & Prompts.
Assistants brandflare doesn't ask, such as Grok or Meta AI, are listed with their visits alone.
Pages they arrive on. The pages on your website that AI answers link to and people follow. Keep these accurate and current: they are the first thing those visitors see.
What counts as a visit from AI
A visit counts when Google Analytics files it under its AI Assistant channel, or when it came from an assistant brandflare recognises: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, DeepSeek, Grok, Meta AI, Mistral, You.com and Poe.
Three things are worth knowing when you read the figures:
- Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode aren't included. Google Analytics counts a visit from either as an ordinary Google search, so nothing can tell them apart.
- Some visits arrive with no source. A link opened from an assistant's phone app often reaches your site with nothing to say where it came from, and Google Analytics files it under Direct. The real number of visits from AI is higher than any analytics tool can show.
- Days are your property's own. Figures follow the time zone set on your Google Analytics property. Today is left out until it is over, and the most recent two or three days can still change as Google finishes processing them.
Disconnecting
An owner or admin can disconnect from the Connection card at the foot of the page. brandflare stops reading your Google Analytics and deletes the visits it has read. You can also remove brandflare's access from your Google account at any time, under the apps with access to your account; the page then asks you to connect again.
If Google stops letting brandflare read the property, for example because the login that connected it has lost access, the page says so and keeps the figures it has until you connect again.
Reading it with the Crawlers tab
Crawlers counts the automated visitors AI companies send to read your pages. Visitors counts people. A page can be read by crawlers every day and send you no visitors, or the other way round, and the two tabs together show whether being read is turning into being visited.