{"id":189008,"date":"2025-06-24T05:41:33","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T10:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/?p=189008"},"modified":"2025-08-26T09:51:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T14:51:26","slug":"ai-traffic-quality-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/ai-traffic-quality-study\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Visitors Visit Fewer Pages and Bounce More Often Than Traditional Search Visitors"},"content":{"rendered":"
Google is forever telling us that AI search is better quality\u2026<\/div>\n
When they [users] get to a decision to click out, it\u2019s a more highly qualified click\u2026 What we hope to see over time\u2014and we don\u2019t have any data to share on this\u2014is more time spent on site<\/strong>, which is what we see organically in a much more highly qualified visitor<\/strong> for the website.<\/strong><\/div>
Undisclosed Google Executive,<\/span> Search Engine Journal<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cWhat you see with something like AI Overviews, when you bring the friction down for users, is people search more and that opens up new opportunities for websites, for creators, for publishers to access. And they get higher-quality clicks.<\/strong><\/div>
\"Elizabeth<\/div>
Elizabeth Reid,<\/span> Head of Google Search, Search Engine Land<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately, we can\u2019t even validate or dispute those claims, because Google doesn\u2019t give us the ability to differentiate between AI-powered search traffic and traditional search traffic in Search Console or analytics tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But we can<\/em> assess user clicks from other major AI platforms\u2026 and that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve analyzed 81,947 sites to understand the quality of AI traffic and user behavior, vs. search and overall user averages.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve found\u2026<\/p>\n

Contents<\/div><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n