ZDNET Lists 5 AI Search Tactics as Website Traffic Loss Deepens Despite 66% Referral Growth
Updated
Updated · ZDNet · Jul 14
ZDNET Lists 5 AI Search Tactics as Website Traffic Loss Deepens Despite 66% Referral Growth
1 articles · Updated · ZDNet · Jul 14
Summary
AI referrals to websites rose 66% in 2025, but still made up less than 0.15% of total visits, prompting ZDNET to frame AI citations as a visibility necessity rather than a traffic fix.
ZDNET said AI platforms now answer users inside ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, siphoning clicks from sites even when traditional search rankings and classic SEO signals remain intact.
Five tactics it highlighted were allowing AI crawlers in robots.txt, writing self-contained answer-first passages, backing claims with numbers and sources, testing an llms.txt file, and building visibility beyond a website on platforms like YouTube and Reddit.
For measurement, ZDNET pointed readers to manual citation checks, free tools such as HubSpot's AEO Grader, Google Analytics referral filters, and paid platforms starting around $29 a month.
The advice leaned on a 2024 study from Princeton, Georgia Tech and Ai2 that tested nine tactics across 10,000 queries and found citation gains of up to 40%.