Top 50 Websites Dominating Traffic With AI: See Who’s Leading the Digital Revolution!

Month by month, traffic from generative AI is increasing. For SEO professionals who have traditionally focused on Google and to a lesser extent on social media, optimizing for conversational agents is becoming an important consideration. But which websites do these AIs tend to favor? Digital analytics platform Similarweb addresses this question in its latest study, which relies on global data from its AI Chatbot Traffic Referrals tool. This tool tracks the traffic sent by major AIs (like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, etc.) to other sites. In May 2025, these AIs were responsible for a total of 1.3 billion referred visits to a sample of the top 1,000 web domains.

YouTube: The Top Traffic Recipient

According to the study, YouTube clearly stands out among the websites analyzed. In May 2025 alone, the video hosting platform received nearly 38 billion visits from ChatGPT, a number that exceeds the combined visits of the rest of the top five websites.

There are at least two reasons for YouTube’s dominance:

• ChatGPT often includes videos in its responses, and these videos are almost always from YouTube.
• Unsurprisingly, Google frequently promotes its own platform, which it acquired in 2006. For instance, Gemini tends to regularly direct users to YouTube Music.

ChatGPT often accounts for 100% of the referrals detected in the Similarweb data model. YouTube Music is an exception, with about 25% of its traffic coming from Google Gemini, according to the study.

Social Networks: A Favorite Source for AI

The study also reveals that social networks are a favored source for generative AIs. The top 20 list includes six social platforms: Facebook (2nd), Reddit (4th), Instagram (7th), LinkedIn (10th), Pinterest (12th), and TikTok (18th). With 10.9 million visits in May 2025, Facebook continues to attract significant interest. Similarweb notes that “most of this traffic was directed towards help pages like facebook.com/business/help”, rather than personal pages.

It’s notable that X is missing from the list, indicating a decline in the network’s credibility as it becomes more associated with dubious content and misinformation. When it comes to user-generated content, chatbots seem to prefer Reddit, which attracted over 9.6 million visits in May.

Other Notable Mentions in the Rankings

Already a favorite of Google, Wikipedia also appears to be favored by generative AIs. The collaborative encyclopedia, known for its source verification system and clear information structure, ranks third among the sites receiving the most AI-driven visits, with over 10.1 million visits in May 2025.

Platforms like ChatGPT are also venturing into commerce, as evidenced by the launch of ChatGPT Shopping and the recent partnership between Perplexity and PayPal. This trend is reflected in the traffic numbers: platforms like Amazon (9th, 4.6 million visits) and Etsy (17th, 2.3 million visits) manage to attract a significant number of visits.

Media outlets rank lower in the list. The Guardian (27th) and Reuters (30th) seem to benefit the most from AI. Both outlets are known for their reliability and have partnerships with AI companies. Economic and financial news sources are also frequently cited by conversational agents, including investing.com, businessinsider.com, and economictimes.com.