Dark AI Traffic
AI-referred website visits that analytics tools can't properly attribute because the referring AI platform strips or omits referrer headers.
Dark AI traffic refers to website visits originating from AI platforms — particularly ChatGPT's Atlas browser — that appear as 'Direct' or '(not set)' in analytics tools like GA4 because the referrer header is stripped during the redirect. This means reported AI referral numbers systematically undercount actual AI-driven visits. Practitioners can investigate by looking for unexplained increases in direct traffic to pages that rank well in search and are likely cited by AI systems.
Also known as
dark AI traffic, hidden AI traffic, unattributed AI traffic, AI dark traffic