Hi friends 👋🏻

In my email last week I wrote about whether it makes sense to invest in a website as we hear about how AI tools are answering users' questions without ever sending them to your website.

Several of you asked how you can tell if website traffic is coming from AI tools, so this week, here's one way to answer that question!

I'll start with my own experience ...

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AI traffic surprises

I'll admit, I've made very little effort to adjust the content on the Blue Hills Digital website for our current age of AI tools and "answer engine optimization".

Traffic to the site as dropped dramatically over the last two years, but I'm grateful that business hasn't slowed down.

And so far, I've had two clients get in touch specifically because Claude recommended me! Thanks Claude 🙌🏻 Fingers crossed that continues.

What to monitor

The data point I'm most interested in is WHICH PAGES on my site are getting traffic from AI tools.

The Blue Hills Digital website – probably like your website – has a variety of different URL types:

• Top-of-the-funnel, informational pages (usually articles or resources).
• Bottom-of-the-funnel "services" pages: the pages which describe the value I can offer and would lead visitors to get in touch to discuss a project.
• Brand pages that describe me, my business, or boost authority. These are the homepage, the about/bio page, and case study pages.

When I'm thinking about how my audience is using AI tools, I understand if traffic drops off on my informational pages.

It would make sense that a tool like Claude would slurp up the content on my informational articles and use it to answer questions without a website visit (whether I like it or not).

Here's what I'm really concerned about: are AI tools continuing to send visitors to my brand and service pages?

Those are the important pages. The visitors there are in research mode. They have a problem they need to solve and they're looking for an experienced partner to make that problem go away!

What does this look like for a nonprofit org?

My website is for a consulting business. But the pages on a typical nonprofit website can be categorized in a similar way.

Just substitute my "services" pages for the URLs on your site where users take your target actions:

• Donations
• Volunteer signups
• Event registrations
• Resource downloads

Those are actions users can't take in an AI tool, so they're still going to need to come to your website.

See your own data

Good news: if you have Google Analytics installed on your website, you can see a list of landing pages hit by users referred from AI tools with just a few clicks.

Navigate to the Reports > Engagement > Landing Pages view

This report shows all landing pages (the first page visited in a website session).

Now we need to apply a filter to this report to only show visits that originated with a click from an AI tool.

Helpfully, Google Analytics has defined a "source traffic channel" to help us do that.

• Click on the pencil filter icon in the top right corner above the graph (below the date range selector)
• In the filter bar on the right side, click Add Filter
• Under Dimension, select Session Primary Channel Group
• For Match Type, select Exactly Matches
• For Value, check the box labeled AI Assistant
• Click the blue Apply button

The Customize Report panel should look like this when you're done:

You'll see the graph and table update to show only the Landing Pages referred by AI tools.

You can also apply a filter in the same way to all page views on the site, which will allow you to expand this filtered view to capture all pages that users viewed during a session that originated from an AI tool.

A couple of technical notes:

• ​Google's documentation indicates that the "AI Assistant" channel "includes sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot, or Grok."
• The "AI Assistant" channel does not include traffic from Google Search AI Overviews or AI Mode.

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This is the quickest way to get a rough view of how AI tools are sending traffic to your website.

My advice:

• If you're losing traffic on previously-popular informational pages, don't worry too much. Those are easier targets for AI tools to scrape the information you provided and answer it without sending a website visitor. It's still worth publishing that content. And as much as possible, build up your authority and expertise when you do so. This will encourage AI tools to learn more heavily on your answers, and increase the chance that you're attributed as the source.
• Focus on traffic to brand and bottom-of-funnel conversion pages. This is where you don't want traffic to slip. Ideally, users' research using AI tools will still turn up your organization's name and when that user is ready to get involved or donate, they will still need to come to your website. Make sure those pages have great, clear, accessible content!

Want to see the other side of the journey?

Open up a private session with an AI tool (outside of your own account) and start doing some research about the issue area where your org works. Ask some information queries. See if your informational content is cited. And drill down, as if you were a potential volunteer or donor, weighing which organization to donate to. See what happens ...

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