Traffic from AI-driven interfaces to Hungarian websites has increased at least a hundredfold in less than two years. According to the latest AI Traffic Index from JabJab Online Marketing, visits originating from AI-based platforms such as ChatGPT or Gemini accounted for just 0.01% of total visits to the examined sites two years ago; by summer 2026 that share had risen above 1%.
News sites: biggest gain, biggest headache
The most pronounced increase was observed on news sites: over the past four months, traffic coming from AI interfaces was six to seven times higher than in the prior period. The rise is partly explained by increased information demand around the spring 2026 parliamentary election and by AI systems including more and more prominent references in their answers since May.
Tamás Geiger, Chief Operating Officer of JabJab Online Marketing, summarized the trend: “The growth rate of AI traffic is astonishing at first sight. In autumn 2024 it was almost unmeasurable, but by summer 2026 it already accounted for more than 1 percent of total website traffic. Users increasingly turn to AI for everyday questions, and in many cases they reach news, products or services from there.”
Declining search traffic and limits of AI referrals
Behind the visible growth, however, a less favorable development emerges: traditional free-search traffic (for example from Google searches) to the examined Hungarian sites has declined, and the additional visits from AI interfaces do not yet compensate for that loss.
Comparing April–July 2026 with the same months a year earlier, extra traffic from AI covered only 4.7% of the visits lost from search engines. This means that although AI systems direct more users onward in some cases, overall they hold more clicks on their own surfaces: users often obtain the necessary information from an AI-generated answer or an AI summary shown among search results and therefore do not open the original webpage.
The report notes that source verification remains important to avoid errors stemming from occasional incorrect AI summaries.
Sector differences: marketplaces to accommodation platforms
There are notable differences across sectors. Marketplaces saw AI-origin traffic approach 1.6%, electronics e‑shops about 1.4%, and telecommunications sites around 1.1%. Accommodation-booking platforms are in a comparatively better position: despite rising AI referrals, their search-origin traffic did not fall as sharply as in several other categories.
News sites, by contrast, are in a particularly mixed situation: while they receive some of the largest absolute traffic volumes from AI interfaces, their traditional search traffic has almost halved according to the analysis, and AI-driven visits have only partly compensated that decline.
Why this matters
The shift indicates that AI technologies increasingly shape users’ information pathways—from news and shopping decisions to health and everyday queries. For content creators and website owners this presents a new challenge: declining organic search traffic can affect revenue and visibility, while AI referrals have not yet become a full substitute.
JabJab Online Marketing’s AI Traffic Index suggests websites should adapt to the new realities of the AI era and strive to appear as reliable, citable sources for AI systems.
