Track Visitors from AI Platforms
AI Referral Tracking shows you when human visitors arrive at your website after clicking links in AI platform responses. This measures the real traffic impact of your AI visibility.
What Are AI Referrals?
AI referrals are website visits where a human visitor clicked a link from an AI platform:
- Clicks from Perplexity search citations
- Clicks from ChatGPT responses with web browsing
- Clicks from Claude answer citations
- Clicks from Google AI Overview source links
- Clicks from Gemini, Copilot, and other AI platforms
Note: This tracks human visitors clicking AI citations, not AI crawler bots. For crawler detection, see AI Crawler Logs.
Setting Up Tracking
Add the Surva.ai tracking script to your website:
- Go to Site Tracking > AI Referrals
- Click Setup Tracking
- Copy the one-line script tag
- Add it before the closing </body> tag on your site
<script src="https://app.surva.ai/t/YOUR_TOKEN.js" async></script>
The script detects when visitors arrive from AI platform domains and records the referral.
How It Works
When a visitor lands on your page, the script checks the referrer URL. If it matches an AI platform domain (like perplexity.ai or chat.openai.com), it records:
- Source platform
- Landing page URL
- Timestamp
The script is privacy-first: no cookies, no localStorage, GDPR compliant.
Dashboard Overview
The AI Referrals dashboard shows:
- Total AI Referrals - All visits from AI platforms
- Referrals by Platform - Breakdown by source
- Top Landing Pages - Where AI traffic lands
- Referral Trend - Traffic over time
- Recent Referrals - Latest AI-sourced visits
Supported Referral Sources
Surva.ai identifies referrals from:
- perplexity.ai - Perplexity search clicks
- chat.openai.com - ChatGPT citation clicks
- claude.ai - Claude citation clicks
- gemini.google.com - Gemini citation clicks
- copilot.microsoft.com - Copilot citation clicks
- google.com (AI Overview) - AI Overview source clicks
Connecting Citations to Traffic
Use AI Referrals alongside your Citations data to:
- See which citations actually drive traffic
- Measure citation click-through rates
- Identify high-performing cited pages
- Calculate ROI of AI visibility efforts
Traffic Attribution Tips
To get the most accurate AI referral data:
- Ensure the tracking script is on all pages
- Check that your site does not strip referrer headers
- Note that some AI traffic may show as direct (no referrer) if the platform does not pass referrer data
Referrals vs Crawler Visits
It is important to understand the difference:
- AI Referrals - Human visitors who clicked a link in an AI answer (tracked via JavaScript)
- AI Crawler Visits - Bots crawling your pages to index content (requires server-side tracking)
Both metrics matter: crawler visits indicate indexing activity, while referrals show actual traffic from AI citations.