{"id":2947,"date":"2025-05-26T16:39:21","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T16:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ewebtoolz.com\/blog\/generative-engines-are-breaking-web-analytics-and-hurting-their-future\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T16:39:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T16:39:21","slug":"generative-engines-are-breaking-web-analytics-and-hurting-their-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ewebtoolz.com\/blog\/generative-engines-are-breaking-web-analytics-and-hurting-their-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Generative Engines Are Breaking Web Analytics and Hurting Their Future"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Search is moving from traditional search engines to generative engines, but traffic from many of these sites isn\u2019t being tracked properly in analytics. It\u2019s their fault, not\u00a0yours.<\/p>\n

I was looking at our LLM filter in Ahrefs Web Analytics<\/a> and noticed some common generative engines missing from the list. They\u2019re in our filters, but we aren\u2019t seeing any data from them for\u00a0sites.<\/p>\n

\"Ahrefs<\/figure>\n

This invisible traffic problem comes from these systems stripping the referral value. I first noticed this problem with AI Mode in Google<\/a>, but it\u2019s a common problem for generative engines.<\/p>\n

This is most likely a mistake on their part, but in some cases may be intentional. Some of these tools probably want more market share and just made a mistake, while others may not want you to be able to measure traffic from the systems. Google has said the clicks from AI Search are higher quality, but we have no way to verify that.<\/p>\n

If you have a website that sends traffic to other sites, you should want it to be tracked properly. In the case of generative engines, I warned that these AI bots need to send that info in order to fulfill their social contract<\/a>, where they provide traffic to websites, and websites allow these bots to crawl and their data to be\u00a0used.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a cost to bots crawling your websites and there\u2019s a social contract between search engines and website owners, where search engines add value by sending referral traffic to websites. This is what keeps most websites from blocking search engines like Google, even as Google seems intent on taking more of that traffic for themselves. This social contract extends to generative engines.<\/p>\n

I think many site owners want to let these bots learn about their brand, their business, and their products and offerings. But while many people are betting that these systems are the future, they currently run the risk of not adding enough value for website owners.<\/p>\n

The first LLM to add more value to users by showing impressions and clicks to website owners will likely have a big advantage. Companies will report on the metrics from that LLM, which will likely increase adoption and prevent more websites from blocking their\u00a0bot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The same sentiment is true for attribution. If these generative engines want to win market share, they need to be present in reporting to companies. So far, many are not doing a great\u00a0job.<\/p>\n

I was checking the referrer value by typing \u201cdocument.referrer\u201d in Chrome Dev Tools Console to see if the referrer was passed. If it is, it outputs a value saying where it came from, and if not, it\u2019s\u00a0blank.<\/p>\n

Some of the generative engines send the referrals, others don\u2019t send them at all, and some send them for certain things and not others. I\u2019ve marked those with a warning to indicate partial results.<\/p>\n