Ahrefs Ai Search Tracking

• Most teams first meet AI tracking through a traffic chart.
• Brand Radar covers six AI platforms: Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.
• Pricing is split by product rather than bundled into one plan, and the figures below come from the cited pages.
• Accuracy is where vendor claims and third-party checks diverge most.
• Referral-based measurement still deserves a place alongside prompt tracking. For instance, ahrefs states Brand Radar runs 260M+ monthly prompts (Ekamoira cites Ahrefs' February 2026 Brand Radar page), while Ahrefs' own description refers to a database of 558 million+ search-backed prompts.

Most teams first meet AI tracking through a traffic chart. That chart measures only visits that arrive carrying a referrer.

Ahrefs launched a public monthly dashboard comparing Google and ChatGPT referral traffic. It covers 44,421 sites connected to its free Web Analytics tool. In the July dataset, Google accounted for 41.9% of total traffic, while ChatGPT accounted for 0.19%, according to Search Engine Journal.

Those numbers show what visitors clicked through. They say nothing about a buyer who asked an assistant for a shortlist, read your brand in the answer, and never clicked.

• Referral traffic records clicks that carry a referrer.
• Prompt visibility records brand mentions inside AI answers.
• Prompt visibility is probabilistic, so share across many prompts is more defensible than a fixed rank.

Specifically, Ahrefs argues that AI answers vary run to run. That makes aggregated share across prompts a more reliable measure than any single position.

Brand Radar covers six AI platforms: Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Ahrefs describes this coverage on its Brand Radar page.

Brand Radar reports four core metrics:

• Mentions, the count of AI responses that name your brand.
• Citations, the count of AI responses that link to your pages.
• AI Share of Voice, the share of AI responses that mention or cite your brand against competitors.
• Estimated Impressions, weighted by real search volume.

However, Share of Voice is the metric to watch for competitive positioning. For example, Citations matter most for whether your pages are the sources engines actually link.

Ahrefs' AI Analytics layer adds two views. It shows which pages receive AI-referred visits, and it logs AI crawler visits. Specifically, this connects visibility to the pages you can actually edit. Ahrefs launched a public monthly dashboard comparing Google and ChatGPT referral traffic, covering 44,421 sites connected to Ahrefs' free Web Analytics tool, according to Search Engine Journal.

Pricing is split by product rather than bundled into one plan, and the figures below come from the cited pages. Brand Radar Prompt Tracking starts at $50 per month and its AI Visibility Index starts at $199 per month (according to Ahrefs' Brand Radar page). A third-party review reports an all-platform bundle at $699 per month on top of the base plan and lists Ahrefs' Starter plan at $29 per month (according to Trakkr's review). Check cost against usage: prompts are checked daily on each selected platform, so 5 prompts on 1 platform consume 150 checks per month, and Claude consumes 8 checks per update (according to Ahrefs' pricing notes).

Reported figures; confirm current pricing on Ahrefs' site before budgeting.

Accuracy is where vendor claims and third-party checks diverge most. Ahrefs states that Brand Radar runs 260 million-plus monthly prompts. Its own description refers to a database of 558 million-plus search-backed prompts. Reviewers treat these as different scopes rather than the same figure, according to Ekamoira.

In Writesonic's January 2026 test, Brand Radar reported 3 ChatGPT mentions against 123 actual mentions. It reported 6 Perplexity mentions against 212 actual, according to Ekamoira's citation of Writesonic's review.

A gap that large suggests prompt sampling undercounts certain engines. Treat absolute Brand Radar counts as directional. Lean on trend and share comparisons instead, since Ahrefs' blog argues AI answers are probabilistic and should be measured as aggregated share across many prompts rather than fixed rank.

Referral-based measurement still deserves a place alongside prompt tracking. Ahrefs recommends a regex-based AI traffic channel in GA4. The regex matches sources such as chatgpt.com, perplexity, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com, according to Ahrefs' blog.

Ahrefs' blog also notes that Google Analytics delays visitor data by 24 to 48 hours.

However, the channel setup has limits. Ahrefs' own tracker includes only sites present in every month of its time series. Specifically, it reflects a consistent panel rather than the whole web.

Earlier Ahrefs research used different samples. It put AI referrals near 0.17% of the average site's traffic, according to Search Engine Journal.

Referral measurement has a structural limit. The dashboard counts only visits that arrive with a referrer, and Ahrefs notes that AI visits which strip referrers may be undercounted (according to Search Engine Journal). Dark AI-influenced traffic, such as an app opened from a copied answer, lands in direct traffic and never shows in a channel report.

Growth in the traffic chart therefore understates AI influence, which is why ChatGPT referral growth of 5.3% month over month, against 1.4% for Google in the latest tracker month, should be read as a floor on activity rather than a full measure.

Ahrefs is strongest when AI tracking sits inside an SEO suite that already holds keyword and backlink data.

Dedicated AI visibility tools compete in this category. Examples include profound.com, peec.ai, otterly.ai and goodie.ai. Their pricing and engine coverage are not verified here, so check them directly.

Fastlook takes a different route. It tracks brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Its Page Engine publishes citation-ready pages to WordPress, Webflow and Shopify, so visibility gaps become pages.

Specifically, choose the tool that answers your question. That question might be traffic, prompt share or page production. In the July dataset, Google accounted for 41.9% of total web traffic across the cohort and ChatGPT accounted for 0.19%, according to Search Engine Journal's report on the Ahrefs tracker.

Ahrefs AI tracking suits teams that already pay for Ahrefs. Teams can add Brand Radar without a new vendor relationship. Ahrefs lists Starter at $29 per month, according to Trakkr's review, and Brand Radar pricing at $199 per platform or $699 for all platforms.

However, agencies managing many clients should check seat and workspace limits first. Those limits must fit their reporting needs before they commit.

For example, a practical start follows these steps:

• Build a fixed set of 20 to 30 buyer prompts in your category.
• Track AI Share of Voice for four weeks.
• Compare that share against GA4 AI-channel referrals.

Specifically, where the two diverge, the prompt data shows the visibility you are missing. The referral data shows what you are already earning.

Related guides

• AI Search Traffic Attribution & Tracking: The Complete Guide
• AI Search Rank Tracking: Measure Your Citations
• AI Search Engine Rank Tracking Software: Track Citations
• Best AI Search Rank Tracking Tools: Citation & Visibility
• AI Search Visibility Tracking Software: Monitor Citations