More people ask Gemini and Claude, but ChatGPT sends 95% of AI referrals. Check them all.

Two reports this month measure AI in two different ways. One counts the questions people type into AI assistants. The other counts the visits those assistants send to websites. They point in different directions, and an owner who wants to be named needs to read both.

Who people ask

Comscore published its latest AI Intelligence Report on September 22. It is based on Comscore’s own panel data, and the numbers are company-reported:

Claude’s share of AI prompt volume grew from 2% in January 2026 to 11% in June 2026.
Gemini’s share grew from 17% to 30% over the same months.
ChatGPT is still the leader, but its share fell from 70% to 50%.
In June 2026, 35% of desktop users and 29% of mobile users visited an AI assistant. In January 2025 the figures were 25% and 12%.
Google desktop searches with an AI overview grew from 25.8% in July 2025 to 39.4% in June 2026. Bing’s Copilot Search went from 11.8% to 17.3% over the same time.

The release does not say which country the panel covers.

Who sends the visits

BrightEdge released its own data on September 24. It is a vendor study, and the release does not describe how the data was collected.

Referral traffic from ChatGPT grew 101% from January to August, and ChatGPT’s share of AI-generated referrals reached 95.1%.
In August, Gemini sent 2.4% of AI referral traffic, Perplexity 1.1% and Claude 0.8%.
BrightEdge says AI is still a small part of website referral traffic compared with traditional search, and that its contribution is growing.

What the gap means for you

Put the two reports side by side. According to Comscore, Gemini and Claude now get a much larger share of the questions people ask AI than they did in January. According to BrightEdge, those tools send a small share of the visits that AI assistants send to websites.

So your analytics may show nearly all your AI visits coming from ChatGPT, while your customers also ask other assistants. Analytics counts visits. It cannot show which business an answer named when nobody clicked.

A check of the answers themselves covers what your analytics misses.

Check the answers where your customers ask

Pick five questions your customers ask before they buy.
Ask each one in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Then search it on Google and read the AI overview, if one appears.
For each tool and question, mark the answer: you, your rival, or nobody. Write down the date.
In your analytics, list the visits AI assistants sent you last month, by assistant.
Compare the two lists. Look for the assistants that name your rival but send you no visits. Your analytics alone would never have shown you those.

What to do this week

Run your five questions in three assistants and on Google.
Save each answer with its date and your mark.
Pull last month’s AI referral visits from your analytics.
Repeat both checks next month, the same way.

New Reward’s Rival Map marks where AI names you, your rival, or nobody for the questions your customers ask, with a date on every mark.