Glossary · Measurement
Dark Traffic
Website visits that can't be attributed to a specific referral source in analytics — often because they originated from an AI chat answer.
Why it's hard to see
When someone reads an AI-generated answer and then visits a brand's site directly (by typing the URL, or via a link that doesn't carry clear referral data), that visit often shows up in analytics as direct traffic — with no indication that an AI engine was actually the influence behind it.
Why it matters for reporting
Attributing impact to AI visibility efforts is harder when a meaningful share of the resulting traffic is invisible to standard analytics — which is part of why tracking visibility directly, rather than only traffic, matters.
See more terms in the full glossary, or read the AI Visibility 101 guide for the full picture.