Ahrefs Launches Major Update to 'Brand Radar' AI Search Visibility Tool: Visualize Bot Visits and Human Traffic from AI Citations in One Dashboard

Ahrefs Pte. Ltd., the provider of the all-in-one marketing tool 'Ahrefs,' has launched two major updates to its 'Brand Radar' feature in May 2026, a tool designed to analyze brand visibility in the age of AI search.

The first update, released on May 12, adds new columns that allow users to view bot visits and human traffic from AI citations within the same interface.

The second update, implemented on May 22, introduces a new prompt-based index for Google AI Overview and AI Mode, along with an 'All Platforms' mode that enables cross-platform analysis across all six major AI platforms.

With the rapid adoption of AI search engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, understanding how often a company's website is cited by AI—and whether those citations lead to actual traffic—has become a pressing concern for SEO specialists, marketing leaders, and executives alike.

These updates consolidate previously fragmented AI search data into a single, unified dashboard within Brand Radar, eliminating the need to navigate between multiple tools.

Details of Brand Radar Updates

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▪️ Update 1: Unified View of AI Bot Visits and AI-Driven Human Traffic

Two new columns have been added to the 'Yours' tab in the 'Cited Pages' report within Brand Radar:

New Column

Description

Data Source

Bot Visits

Number of crawl visits by user agents of selected AI chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini)

Bot Analytics

AI Traffic

Number of actual human visitors arriving at the site via selected AI chatbots

Ahrefs Web Analytics

▪️ What This Feature Enables:

1. Three-layer visibility at a glance: Users can now instantly see whether a page is cited by AI, whether AI bots have crawled it, and whether real human traffic has resulted—all in one view.

2. Immediate ROI assessment: Identify optimization opportunities—such as pages cited by AI but receiving little human traffic, or pages with high bot visits but no citations.

3. 90-day historical data: Clicking on any metric redirects users directly to the corresponding report in Ahrefs Web Analytics or Bot Analytics for deeper analysis.

4. Automatic domain matching across workspaces: No project linking required; data is automatically aggregated even when managing multiple domains.

Previously, users had to switch between three separate reports—Brand Radar for citations, Bot Analytics for bot crawl data, and Ahrefs Web Analytics for human traffic. This integration now enables a one-stop evaluation of a website’s presence in AI search.

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▪️ Update 2: Prompt-Based Index for Google AI Overview & AI Mode, Plus Cross-Platform 'All Platforms' View

Google AI Overview and AI Mode now include a new prompt-based index. In addition to the existing keyword-based index (covering approximately 170 million queries), Ahrefs now tracks AI responses to natural language, long-form questions (prompts) at a scale of about 14 million queries.

Comparison

Legacy Index (Keyword-Based)

New Index (Prompt-Based)

Google AI Overview Queries

~170 million

~14 million

AI Mode Queries

~170 million

~14 million

Tracking Method

Short keywords

Natural language long-form prompts

Custom Prompt Tracking

Not supported

Newly supported

Update Status

Legacy Google AI Overview continues updates; legacy AI Mode discontinued (historical data retained temporarily)

Ongoing updates

This approach mirrors systems already in use on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot. As user behavior shifts from keyword-based searches to conversational AI queries, tracking brand mentions by prompt becomes critical for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) strategies in the AI search era.

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▪️ Comment from Takanori Kawarada, Head of Marketing, Japan at Ahrefs

"The rise of AI search means brand visibility can no longer be measured solely by Google search rankings. With users sourcing information through ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overview, and others, it’s essential to understand how AI evaluates and cites your site—and to quantify that impact. With this update, users can now monitor citations, bot visits, and real traffic in one dashboard, and analyze across all six major platforms. This not only streamlines daily SEO and marketing workflows but also supports executive-level reporting on the ROI of AI search channels."

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Company Overview: Ahrefs Pte. Ltd.

Empowering data-driven marketing with proprietary crawlers and high-precision data technology

Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. leverages its proprietary large-scale web crawler and advanced data technology to collect and analyze accurate, up-to-date marketing data. At its core is SEO analysis, but the all-in-one marketing platform 'Ahrefs' also covers AI search analysis, AI-powered content creation, web traffic analytics, and social media publishing management. Recently, Ahrefs has launched 'Agent A,' an interactive AI agent that combines its vast data repository with expert SEO knowledge to redefine traditional SEO practices. Used by over 180 countries worldwide, Ahrefs supports businesses from competitive analysis to content strategy development.