Measuring answers
Measuring Answer Engine Traffic
The short answer
CQI Referrer Attribution records where each visit and enquiry comes from, and classifies traffic from AI assistants into its own channel using a maintained list of AI platforms. Its AIR Engine then estimates how much of your unexplained direct traffic is likely to have come from answer engines that do not pass on where a visitor came from.
Why Answer Engine Traffic Looks Invisible
Traffic from AI assistants rarely carries campaign tags. Some assistants tell your website which platform a visitor came from, and many standard analytics setups still file that visit as referral or direct. Others pass on nothing at all. Either way, answer-engine traffic can look as if it does not exist, and a board asking whether Answer Engineering is working gets no answer.
Two Layers of Evidence
| Layer | What it looks at | What you see | Certainty |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI referrer taxonomy | Visits that arrive from a known AI platform: 19 by default, and your team can add more | An AI Tools channel, with the platform named as the source | Measured |
| AIR Engine | Direct traffic that cannot otherwise be explained, checked against 17 fixed rules across four signals | An estimate of answer engine traffic, traceable to the rules behind it | Estimate, labeled as one |
The AIR Engine is deterministic: the same data always produces the same result, and every conclusion can be traced to the rules that produced it. Its output is an estimate and is presented as one, not as a measurement.
From Visits to Outcomes
Knowing that AI assistants send visitors is the start. CQI Referrer Attribution also records conversions and shows the journey through each session, so you can see which answer-engine visits went on to make an enquiry and which content they arrived on.
It runs on your own website, so attribution data stays in your own database rather than on an analytics vendor's platform.
See it in practice
Built and Run by Us
CQI Referrer Attribution
Attribution for WordPress sites, with the AI referrer taxonomy and the AIR Engine. Refer App brings the same attribution to sites on other platforms.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Which AI assistants can it recognize?
The default taxonomy covers 19 AI platforms, including ChatGPT and Gemini, and your team can add to it as new assistants appear.
Can it see visits from assistants that do not pass on a referrer?
Not directly, because no platform information arrives with those visits. The AIR Engine estimates how much of your unexplained direct traffic is likely to come from them, and labels the result as an estimate.
Does it only work on WordPress?
CQI Referrer Attribution is a WordPress plugin. Refer App provides the same attribution for sites on other platforms.
Where is the attribution data stored?
On your own website, in your own database.
Keep reading
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Start with a Confidential Chat
A no-obligation conversation with H D Fraser about how answer engines represent your organization today, and what a privacy-first approach would involve. NDA on request.