News Sites See Surge In ChatGPT Referral Traffic

ChatGPT Increasingly Directs Traffic to News Outlets

ChatGPT is sending more of its traffic to publishers’ sites.

Of the traffic OpenAI’s generative AI platforms send to external websites, 83% went to news and media sites in April, up from 64% in January, according to Similarweb data shared with Digiday.

Significant Growth in Referral Volume

Referral traffic from ChatGPT also continues to grow this year. ChatGPT sent 243.8 million visits to 250 news and media websites in April 2025, up 98% from 123.2 million visits this January, according to David Carr, senior insights manager at data analytics company Similarweb.

Publisher Fortunes Vary: Winners and Losers in ChatGPT Referrals

Some of the sites that saw the biggest increase change in their share of referral traffic from ChatGPT in April 2025 included The BBC (up 188.9% since January, driving about 118,000 visits), Fox News (up 166.3%, with about 113,000 visits) and The Independent (up 157.7%, with about 80,000 visits), according to Similarweb’s data.

A few of the sites saw the largest drop in their share of referral traffic from ChatGPT last month: CNN’s Spanish language referral traffic was down 55.3%, with 49,000 visits, Mumsnet’s was down 50.26%, with 65,000 visits, and HuffPost down 47.7%, with 174,000 visits.

Top Destinations and OpenAI Deals

Some sites receiving the most visits from ChatGPT in the news and media category in April 2025 included The Guardian and Reuters, each receiving about 1.5 million visits. A Guardian spokesperson declined to comment. The Guardian has a licensing deal with OpenAI, while Reuters does not.

A Reuters spokesperson confirmed they had seen a “steady increase” in traffic coming from ChatGPT.

Understanding the Numbers: ChatGPT's Overall Growth

Carr said Similarweb’s calculations were made by downloading all outbound referrals from Chatgpt.com and eliminating those that weren’t external traffic, such as referrals from Chatgpt.com to openai.com.

Overall, worldwide web visits to Chatgpt.com are up 182% year-over-year and 13% month-over-month in April, according to Similarweb. ChatGPT is also sharing more of its traffic in general. Total external referrals (not just those going to news and media sites) are also up, with ChatGPT sending 293.5 million visits in April 2025, up 53.4% since January 2025.

The Evolution of ChatGPT: From Answers to Search

ChatGPT was originally designed to provide AI-generated answers to prompts within its platform, not search results, Carr noted. That changed when OpenAI added real-time search to ChatGPT in October 2024, which links to sources. It was made available to all users in February. Whereas, Perplexity has always included links to websites within answers on the platform.

Navigating Copyright Concerns and Publisher Relations

With multiple lawsuits accusing OpenAI of copyright infringement for scraping publisher content — including cases brought by The New York Times, Alden Global Capital and Ziff Davis — the pressure on the company to rethink its approach to attribution and compensation is mounting.

“The platform is still designed to present answers, first and foremost, but it’s now more generous to publishers in providing outbound links,” Carr said in an email.

Contrasting Trends: Perplexity Sees Decline in Referrals

Meanwhile, referrals to news and media websites from Perplexity have fallen this year by about 35%, from 5.7 million in January 2025 to 3.7 million in April 2025, according to Similarweb.

OpenAI's Commitment to Enhancing Search and Supporting Publishers

A spokesperson for OpenAI said ChatGPT Search was one of its fastest-growing features, with over a billion queries each week.

“We’re investing in a faster, smarter search experience and remain committed to supporting publishers by driving traffic and helping people discover high-quality news and information,” they said.

Publisher Skepticism: Is This Traffic Truly Impactful?

Despite these upticks, three publishing execs told Digiday that referral traffic from ChatGPT isn’t all that meaningful yet, especially in light of declining click-throughs from Google search due to the expansion of the AI Overviews feature.

“Referrals from AI are up more than 1000% year over year,” said one publishing exec, in exchange for anonymity. “But that’s less explosive than the number implies — it went from a number close to zero to a number that’s still of negligible impact.”

While they declined to share how much traffic was coming from ChatGPT, they said it was even less than small referrers like Twitter or Bluesky.

Another exec, who requested anonymity, said, “I don’t think ChatGPT is going to send us the same referrals as Google. It’s helpful to get referrals but I don’t think it’s going to come in for the gap.”