ChatGPT referral traffic balloons but still tiny | How to build a social-first publisher

And a comment piece on how the big AI companies are behaving like climate denialists

Feb 21, 2025

Hello and happy Friday!

Today we’ve published Similarweb data showing that web referrals from ChatGPT to 14 top publishers grew eight times larger over the past six months — but still only accounted in January for a paltry 0.1% of overall traffic.

Does that mean ChatGPT queries refer less traffic through to publishers than ones made to traditional link-based search engines like Google? It’s difficult to say at this point because we don’t have a firm sense of ChatGPT’s share of the search market. The most generous estimate puts it at 4.33%, while other analysis suggests it still hasn’t cracked 1%. If ChatGPT makes up less than a percent of search engine use but 0.1% of publisher traffic that might not be so bad; if it makes up 4% of search engine use it may be more of a cause for concern.

But one of the most interesting aspects of the data for me was which publishers in the analysis have gotten the most referrals. Forbes was the biggest beneficiary over the six months from both ChatGPT and rival AI search engine Perplexity, while the New York Post (whose parent News Corp has inked a licensing agreement with ChatGPT parent OpenAI) had the second-most from the chatbot.

You can take a look at the findings here: there are lots of charts.

Staying on the subject of AI, today we have also published a comment piece from Graham Lovelace in which he draws parallels between climate change denialism and those in the big tech companies who wilfully contort themselves to escape the conclusion that the training of LLMs has involved wholesale theft from the creative industries and publishers. (Do you reckon Graham is related to the world’s first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace?)

And finally Charlotte Tobitt has spoken to the chief revenue officer at Gallery Media Group about how the business built up a $50m a year, 200 staff publishing business with a strategy organised almost entirely around publishing directly onto social media platforms.

Have a great weekend.

Bron

Press Gazette is returning to New York on 13 March for our third Media Strategy Network event.

This FREE event focuses around several confidential round-table discussions, where you get the chance to share your successes (and failures) with industry peers.

Confirmed speakers include: Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel, Bloomberg Media COO Julia Beizer, The Economist's president and managing director Luke Bradley-Jones, The Independent's COO and president of North America Zach Leonard, WSJ and Barron's chief revenue officer Josh Stinchcomb, Associated Press global CRO Kristin Heitmann and Guardian North America chief advertising officer Sara Badler.

We will even give you lunch and buy you a drink afterwards.

If you are in a senior leadership position at a publisher and feel this event could be useful please click on this link to find out more and register your interest.

A screenshot of a ChatGPT Search response about rival AI DeepSeek showing links through to news sites. As well as Reuters, Business Insider, the Financial Times and The Scottish Sun, who are explicitly cited in the response, clicking through on the "Sources" button reveals further citations of sites also visible in the picture, including The Economist, Asia Times, Nature.com, Notre Dame University and DeepSeek itself. Screenshot: Press Gazette

A screenshot of a ChatGPT search response about rival AI DeepSeek showing links through to news sites. Screenshot: Press Gazette

ChatGPT referrals to top publishers up eight times in six months but still negligible

Total desktop and mobile web visits globally referred to 14 leading publishers by the OpenAI-owned ChatGPT rose eight times from 435,000 in August to 3.5 million in January.

Read more

Gallery Media Group has built $50m a year social-first publishing business

Chief revenue officer Chris Anthony told Press Gazette many publishers have used their social accounts “as just a distribution platform and not actually as a platform for content creation” and are still too focused on driving traffic back to their websites.

Read more

‘Callous disregard’ of copyright by gen AI companies ruins the magic

“Climate deniers bend the truth. So do copyright deniers, twisting logic and language as they seek to defend the indefensible.”

Read more

ChatGPT referral traffic balloons but still tiny | How to build a social-first publisher

And a comment piece on how the big AI companies are behaving like climate denialists

A screenshot of a ChatGPT search response about rival AI DeepSeek showing links through to news sites. Screenshot: Press Gazette

Also on Press Gazette:

And elsewhere…

Discussion about this post