Quick Answer: Agentic traffic is when an AI tool like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini visits a link while helping someone answer a question. You can see how many AI visits a link gets in the AI traffic card on the link's details page. These visits are shown separately and aren't counted in your engagement totals.
In this article:
- How agentic traffic happens
- Agentic traffic vs. crawler traffic
- Is agentic traffic counted in my engagement data?
- How do I see agentic traffic for my links?
- What if my link has no AI traffic?
How agentic traffic happens
A person asks an AI tool a question. The AI tool fetches your link to see what's on the other end, sometimes as one step in building its answer. That fetch is what counts as agentic traffic.
The key difference from other traffic: each agentic visit traces back to a specific person’s request.
Agentic traffic vs. crawler traffic
Crawler traffic: Search engines and AI training systems automatically fetch pages on a schedule to build indexes, regardless of whether anyone asked for your link. For more on how we handle them, see How does Bitly handle traffic from bots?
Agentic traffic: An AI tool visits your link once, in response to a specific person's question, rather than on a recurring schedule.
Is agentic traffic counted in my engagement data?
No. AI visits appear only in the AI traffic card. They aren't included in your engagement totals. The engagements on your Links page and Analytics dashboards reflect visits from people.
Crawler traffic is still filtered out completely and doesn't appear anywhere in your analytics.
How do I see agentic traffic for my links?
You can check agentic traffic across your whole account with Bitly Assist, or look at one link at a time on its details page.
Viewing agentic traffic for all my links using Bitly Assist
Bitly Assist can tell you how much agentic traffic all your links received and which links have agentic traffic. The amount of data available depends on your subscription plan. Visit the billing and usage section of your account settings to view your account limits.
- Click the Bitly Assist icon in the top navigation bar.
- Ask about your AI traffic. For example: How much AI traffic did my links get?
- Click Enter.
- Bitly Assist replies with the estimated number of AI visits across all your links.
Viewing agentic traffic for a single link
- Log in to your Bitly account.
- Click Links in the left sidebar.
- Select the link you want to review to open its details page.
- Scroll down to Link analytics and find the AI traffic card. To change the time period, use the date range menu at the top of Link analytics.
What does the AI traffic card show?
- Visits: The estimated number of times AI assistants visited your link during the selected date range.
- Comparison: How that number changed from the previous period.
- Top assistants: The AI assistants that visited your link most.
- Download: Click the download icon to download your AI traffic data with a breakdown by AI assistant.
Have feedback on AI traffic? Click Share your thoughts? or the thumbs up or thumbs down icons at the bottom of the card.
What if my link has no AI traffic?
If no AI assistants have visited your link, the card shows 0 visits and asks, What is your goal for AI traffic to this link? Choose the option that fits best. Your answer can help Bitly decide which AI traffic tools to build next.