# See Where Each Visitor Came From, Live

To see where your website visitors come from right now, use a live view that labels each person's source. whoisbrowsing shows, for every current visitor, whether they arrived from Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, a link on another site, or directly, next to the page they are on and an approximate city.

## The source list

| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| Google, Bing | A visit that arrived from that search engine |
| ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude | A visit that arrived from that AI assistant |
| Another site's name, such as `news.ycombinator.com` | A click on a link from that site |
| Your own tag, such as `newsletter` | The link carried `utm_source=newsletter` |
| Direct | No source reported: typed address, bookmark, some apps, or a visit that sent no referrer |

The label comes from what the visitor's browser reports when they arrive. "Direct" is therefore a catch-all, not proof that someone typed your address. Referrer information is sometimes missing or stripped, which is one reason analytics tools show an "unassigned" bucket too.

The label is worked out in the visitor's browser from two things: the referrer, and a `utm_source` tag on the landing address if there is one. A tag wins over the referrer, and a tag that names a known domain gets its friendly name, so `utm_source=chatgpt.com` reads ChatGPT. Only the label is sent; the query string itself never leaves the browser.

## Where it appears

Open your own site while watching. In the side panel, each person has one line with:

- the page they are on, with live counts per page (busiest first);
- their source;
- an approximate city, such as "near Austin, TX";
- device (desktop, tablet or phone), browser and operating system;
- time on site and pages this visit.

On the page itself you see their cursor with a fading trail, click ripples, or a see-through band for phones. You can match a source to behaviour: do visitors from search read, and do visitors from a link bounce?

## Why live source labels help

- **Immediate feedback on a post or campaign.** Add `?utm_source=newsletter` to the link you send, and the people who click it show up labelled "newsletter", so you can tell them apart from your other traffic while they are still on the page.
- **Spot a new channel.** Seeing "Perplexity" or "ChatGPT" appear is a signal worth acting on. Standard GA4 reports can bury these under Referral or Unassigned, as [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-traffic-research/) and [Abmatic](https://abmatic.ai/blog/track-ai-referral-traffic-ga4) describe. See [seeing ChatGPT visitors live](/learn/track-chatgpt-visitors-live).
- **Understand intent.** A visitor from a search result usually arrived with a question; a direct visitor often already knows you.

## How to turn it on

```html
<script src="https://live.whoisbrowsing.com/s.js" data-site="YOUR_SITE_ID" defer></script>
```

The tag is under 4 KB gzipped and does not change how your page looks. Open your site in a Chrome Incognito or Safari private window to appear as a visitor and check your own source label, then try opening it from a search result or a link to see different labels. Start at [/try](/try) without signing in.

## Privacy

Query strings never leave the browser, and URL tokens in a path (UUIDs, long hex strings and long random tokens) are sent as `:id`. So the source label does not expose private links. Nothing about your visitors is stored on our servers. No cookies on your visitors. You see a city, not an identity. Visitors from the EU/EEA, UK and Switzerland, and browsers with Global Privacy Control, are never shown. See [privacy](/privacy); this is not legal advice.

## When whoisbrowsing is not the right tool

It shows the sources of the people on your site now, not a ranked history of sources over months. For channel reports, attribution and campaign tracking, use an analytics tool. Learn how the pieces fit in [how it works](/how-it-works), or read [live visitor tracking](/learn/live-visitor-tracking).

## Common questions

**Why do some visitors show as direct?** Direct covers visitors whose browser reported no source. That includes typed addresses and bookmarks, and also visits where the referrer was stripped.

**Can it show the search term someone used?** No. It shows the source, not the query.

**Do the labels include AI assistants?** Yes: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude are labelled separately.

**Do I need to tag my links?** No. The source is read from where the visitor came from. If a link does carry a `utm_source` tag, that tag becomes the label; it is read in the visitor's browser, and only the label is sent.

**Does it work for pages other than the homepage?** Yes. Every page with the tag reports its visitors. The side panel groups people by page, busiest first, so you can see which page each source lands on. A visitor who arrives from a search engine on a blog post and then moves to pricing is one person, with the page and pages-this-visit count updating as they go.