How to Increase ChatGPT Referral Traffic: A Case Study

Craig Kanalley
Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:06:38 +0000
Case study

Technical SEO seemed like an enigma we couldn't decipher, but after we started working with Craig and the RebelMouse team, everything clicked into place: Thanks to their in-depth audits and insights, we’re now able to optimize our site and content to successfully boost our search referrals. SEO secrets unlocked!

Erico Guizzo
Digital Innovation Director, IEEE Spectrum

Introduction

As publishers scramble to adapt to the age of AI and zero-click searches, shifting an increasing amount of attention to AI Optimization (AIO), IEEE Spectrum is proof that substance still matters. While many newsrooms worry about traffic losses from AI answers, IEEE Spectrum is growing its audience because when ChatGPT needs to cite a source on quantum computing, robotics, or large language models (LLMs), it often turns to them.

The incredible thing about the referral traffic is its diversity. It’s not just one page that has taken off or a few queries. IEEE Spectrum’s authority, expertise, high-quality journalism, and tendency to be ahead of the curve on tech trends has them winning referral traffic from AI for more than 5,000 pages on their site just in the last 30 days.

What We Did

Enhanced structured data

Introduced clear, comprehensive taxonomy

Implemented AI efficiency tools

Intelligent internal smartlinking

We've always believed that deep, expert-driven content would win in the long run -- and now, with AI emerging as a dominant force in discovery and seeking in-depth, trustworthy content, we're seeing exactly that. It's incredibly rewarding to see the sustained, thoughtful work of our editorial team in collaboration with RebelMouse pay off in such a meaningful way.

Erico Guizzo
Digital Innovation Director, IEEE Spectrum

Solution

Besides the expertise cited above, how did they do it? It’s been a combination of the following efforts:

Structured Data Approach: Everything about IEEE Spectrum and their site is structured. You’ll see the frequent use of subheadings and a question/answer format that is incredibly user-friendly.

A Clear Taxonomy: They have 12 main topics, spanning AI and Robotics to Computing and Semiconductors. They heavily utilize tags to group content together.

Real Human Experts: Their Editorial Staff is impressive, and collectively they have so much experience and expertise on the topics they cover. This isn’t AI-generated content, its original human-conducted analysis, research, and writing that is winning.

AI for Efficiency Only: But they don’t ignore AI entirely. In fact, they use it to help with workflows for mundane (but important) tasks like generating headlines and teasing content they’ve already created. This makes them more efficient.

Technical SEO Obsession: We have plenty of data that shows regular technical SEO audits — we recommend monthly — make a difference to keep your site in tip-top shape. That’s because the web is dynamic and always changing, and even if your site isn’t making changes, third-party sites you link to are. IEEE Spectrum performs regular technical SEO audits and they’re quick to work through the fixes needed.

Monthly Content Audits: Their dedication to regularly auditing all of their content with their editorial staff, once a month, makes it very easy to identify opportunities, as well as what is and isn’t working.

Intelligent Linking: The use of SmartLinks surfaces their hundreds of tag pages to give users the latest information on all of the companies, topics, technologies, regions, etc. that they regularly cover. These are implemented at scale across all of their pages. In addition to helping LLMs and search crawlers find relevant content, these also increase time on site and those referred by ChatGPT average 2–3 pageviews per user.

Results

www.rebelmouse.com

The chart above of IEEE Spectrum’s referrals from AI chatbots from January 2025 to early June 2025 vs. the previous five months says it all. Collectively, they’ve seen an increase of about 100% on pageviews and users within that timeframe, and they’re seeing more growth every month.

Every month, this publisher grows its AI search referral traffic. This has now happened consistently for several months dating back to mid 2024. Once again from May 2025 to June 2025, they increased AI referrals another 9% from ChatGPT (94% of the mix), Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. These numbers do not include Google’s AI Overviews, where they also have a presence.

We’re incredibly proud to work with IEEE Spectrum and clearly all of this work helps with AI optimization, surfacing high-quality content to those who want to know more about technical topics. Their work has always deserved a large audience – and now, with a little help from AI, it’s expanding its reach.

Are you a publisher or brand hoping to see this type of growth with your own website? Get in touch and we can help you build out that strategy today!