Getting cited by AI assistants is half the job. The other half is knowing whether those answers send you visitors. By default GA4 files AI traffic under Referral, mixed in with every other website that links to you. A custom channel takes ten minutes and fixes that. (Want to get cited in the first place? Start with how to get recommended by ChatGPT.)
What AI visits look like in GA4
- ChatGPT: OpenAI says ChatGPT automatically adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to referral URLs, so clicks from ChatGPT answers arrive with the source chatgpt.com.
- Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and others: when the browser passes a referrer, the visit shows the assistant's domain as its source, for example perplexity.ai, claude.ai, gemini.google.com or copilot.microsoft.com.
- Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: Google says clicks from these features are included in your overall Search traffic and reported in Search Console's Performance report under the Web search type. In GA4 they look like normal Google organic visits, so you can't separate them there.
Step 1: Create an "AI assistants" channel
- In GA4, go to Admin, then Data display, then Channel groups.
- Click "Create new channel group". This copies the default group, so all your existing channels stay.
- Name it, for example "Channels with AI", then click "Add new channel" and name the channel "AI assistants".
- Add a condition: Source, matches regex, and paste the pattern below. Save the channel.
- Reorder the channels so "AI assistants" sits above Referral and Organic Search, then save the group.
^(.*\.)?(chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|perplexity\.ai|claude\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com|chat\.deepseek\.com|chat\.mistral\.ai|meta\.ai)$
Order matters: Google's documentation says traffic is assigned to the first channel whose definition it matches. If Referral comes first, it swallows your AI visits. Custom channel groups also apply to your reports retroactively, so you see past data straight away. Standard GA4 properties can have two custom channel groups.
Step 2: Read the report
Open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, and switch the table's primary dimension to your new channel group. Add Landing page as a secondary dimension to see which pages AI assistants send people to. Those are the pages worth keeping accurate and up to date.
Quick check without a channel group
If you only want a one-off answer, open Explore, create a free-form exploration with the dimensions Session source and Landing page, add Sessions and Key events as metrics, and filter Session source with the same regex.
Read the numbers carefully
- Treat the count as a floor. Some apps and privacy settings strip the referrer, and those visits land in Direct.
- Most AI answers don't produce a click at all. A brand that is recommended often can still see modest referral numbers, so measure mentions too, for example with our free AI mention check.
- Crawler visits don't appear in GA4, because bots like OAI-SearchBot don't run your analytics script. To see whether AI crawlers can reach you, use the AI crawler checker or your server logs.
- The list of assistants changes. Review the regex every few months and add new domains you see under Referral.
Grow the number
AI referrals follow citations, and citations follow access and clarity. Run the free scan below to see whether AI search bots can reach your pages, whether your content is readable without JavaScript, and whether you have the structured data and llms.txt that help assistants describe you correctly.