January 2026 release: New traffic source: AI Referrals | Compete better on Google with new SEO capabilities

Product updates and new capabilities we released to the Siteimprove platform in January. Designed to enhance your experience and help you achieve more with ease and efficiency. 

The January release includes:

1. New Traffic Source Classification: AI Referrals
2. New SEO capabilities: Improve Your Rankings in Google Search Results 

1. New Traffic Source Classification: AI Referrals

We’ve introduced a new traffic source category: AI referrals. This classification identifies human visitors who reach your site through links shared in AI-driven chat platforms and virtual assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, and other conversational AI tools.

Easily segment and analyze traffic originating from AI-powered conversations separately from channels like search engines, social platforms, direct traffic, and external referrals. This gives you better visibility into how AI tools influence discovery.

How to use it:

• Visit the Traffic Sources section in Marketing Analyti to see a clear breakdown of your AI referrals.
• Create segment filters using this new traffic source to apply AI‑specific segmentation across any view that supports filters.

Visit this article to read more: How are Traffic Sources defined in Analytics? (Opens in a new tab)

2. New SEO capabilities: Improve Your Rankings in Google Search Results

We've added several new SEO capabilities to help you better understand and compete in Google search results: SERP X‑Ray, Competitive Heatmap, and Site-level Heatmap.

Search engine results pages: SERP X‑Ray

SERP X‑Ray analyzes the top-ranking Google results for any keyword and highlights the patterns that matter most for SEO performance. 

You’ll see insights on:

• Content structure: common use of images, videos, internal links, heading depth, and more.
• Content depth: content score, word count, and how they compare to recommended targets.
• Dominant search intent: what type of content Google rewards for that topic.

You can also add your own URL to see how your page stacks up against the leaders and quickly pinpoint high‑impact opportunities to improve competitiveness.

Competitive Heatmap

Competitive Heatmap helps you identify content gaps by analyzing Google search engine results pages (SERPs) for a given keyword. It compares your content against top‑ranking competitors using a topic model built from that keyword. This shows how often the keyword, and other important related terms, appear on high‑ranking pages so you can refine your content strategy and improve your page rankings. 

Deepen this analysis by adding one of your page URLs. The “Gaps” view highlights terms your page is missing, and the “Must‑Haves” view surfaces the keywords that have the strongest impact on helping your page rank higher. 

Site-Level Heatmap

The Site‑Level Heatmap helps you discover which pages on your site could form a strong topic cluster. It shows how well each page covers the topic and helps you refine your content strategy to strengthen topical coverage and improve your site's overall rankings. 

Extend this analysis by adding a competitor's URL to compare how comprehensively their page covers the topic relative to your site.

These features are available to customers with a Keyword Intelligence subscription.