AI traffic in GA4: how to see visits from ChatGPT and other AIs

Reading time: 14 minutes

AI traffic in GA4, such as visits from ChatGPT, shows up in the AI Assistant channel, under Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. The channel has existed since May 2026, but it shows only part of the ChatGPT traffic that reaches GA4. The rest lands in Referral, Unassigned and Direct. In addition, clicks from AI Overviews stay in organic search.

Where can you see ChatGPT traffic in GA4?

Open Reports, then Acquisition and Traffic acquisition. In the table grouped by channel, the AI Assistant row adds up the traffic GA4 recognized as coming from chatbots. To see which assistant each session came from, switch the table dimension to Session source / medium.

The channel launched on May 13, 2026, according to the What’s new in Google Analytics page. However, the rollout was gradual and reached most properties in early June, according to SEO consultant Itamar Blauer. Google’s Portuguese-language help calls the channel Assistente de IA. When the visit’s referrer is on Google’s list of assistants, GA4 records the medium ai-assistant and the campaign (ai-assistant). The session shows up, for example, as chatgpt.com / ai-assistant.

1. Open the report. In GA4, go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition and look for the AI Assistant row.
2. Open the sources. Then switch the dimension to Session source / medium and search for chatgpt.com, gemini.google.com and claude.ai.
3. Check the results. Finally, compare the Engagement rate and Key events columns with those of the other channels.

Which assistants does the AI Assistant channel include?

Google does not publish the full list of recognized assistants. Instead, the documentation gives only examples, and they change from one page to another. For example, the launch note mentions ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. The channel definition, on the other hand, mentions ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok. But Perplexity does not appear in either.

Assistant	Launch note	Channel definition
ChatGPT	Yes	Yes
Gemini	Yes	Yes
Claude	Yes	No
Copilot	No	Yes
DeepSeek	No	Yes
Grok	No	Yes
Perplexity	No	No

The default channel group definition also says what the channel leaves out. The channel excludes Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. Those clicks therefore go into Organic Search.

In July 2026, Blauer reported in Search Engine Journal that Perplexity was still landing in Referral. Indeed, in the custom channel groups help, Google lists Perplexity among the examples. But there it goes into the regex you create yourself. Check where each assistant shows up in your property before you build the report. Each one chooses sources in its own way; see how to show up in Gemini, Perplexity and Claude.

Why does ChatGPT traffic show up in more than one GA4 channel?

That happens because GA4 decides the channel by the combination of source and medium, not by source alone. So the same chatgpt.com can show up in AI Assistant, Referral and Unassigned. Anyone who reads only the default channel row counts just one slice of ChatGPT traffic in GA4.

• chatgpt.com / ai-assistant: visits GA4 recognized, which therefore go into AI Assistant.
• chatgpt.com / referral: visits GA4 did not tag or that arrived before the channel went live in the property, according to Blauer. They go into Referral.
• chatgpt.com / (not set): visits with no medium. They go into Unassigned, that is, the value GA4 uses when no channel rule applies.

Blauer saw all three slices in a single account in June 2026:

“Read the AI Assistant channel on its own, and you’ll undercount every single time.”

Itamar Blauer, SEO consultant, in Search Engine Journal (2026)

Google’s documentation shows how the slice with no medium can appear. According to GA4 help on UTMs, if the URL has any UTM parameter, all source dimensions come from the UTMs. As a result, any missing parameter becomes (not set).

OpenAI used to document that ChatGPT added utm_source=chatgpt.com to links in answers with search. The page went offline in October 2026, but the archived copy of OpenAI’s FAQ shows the text. The FAQ mentioned only utm_source. So, under Google’s rule, a link with only that parameter would reach GA4 as chatgpt.com / (not set). In Blauer’s experience, however, this slice of ChatGPT traffic usually comes from the app and its in-app browser, which lose the referrer.

How to create an AI channel group in GA4

A custom channel group can classify visits by source alone, without looking at the medium. That way, GA4 brings the three slices of ChatGPT traffic back into a single row. In addition, the group applies to past data and accepts assistants Google does not recognize. To create one, you need the Editor role on the property.

1. Open the groups. In Admin, go to Data display and click Channel groups.
2. Copy the default. Then click Create new channel group. GA4 creates a copy of the default group.
3. Create the AI channel. Click Add new channel and give it a name, such as “AI (all sources)”.
4. Set the condition. In Add condition group, choose Source and “matches regex”. After that, paste the expression below and click Save channel.
5. Reorder. In Reorder, drag the channel above Referral and Organic Search, and then click Apply.
6. Save and use it. Finally, click Save group. In Traffic acquisition, choose the new group as the table dimension.

^(chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|(www\.)?perplexity\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com|claude\.ai|chat\.deepseek\.com|grok\.com)$

Order matters because each visit goes into the first channel whose rule it meets, according to the custom channel groups help. If the copy includes the AI Assistant channel, keep it right below yours. It then catches the assistants Google recognizes that your regex does not cover yet. Standard properties allow 2 custom groups, and Analytics 360 properties allow 5.

Why use this regex instead of Google’s example?

According to the GA4 regular expressions page, the regex has to match the whole value. The page also points to RE2 syntax, which does not support lookahead. That is why the expression above lists exact domains and escapes the dots. It extends the regex in our measurement guide with DeepSeek and Grok, which Google names in the channel definition.

Google’s example, on the other hand, is broader. For instance, the ^.*ai part accepts any source ending in “ai”, and .*gpt.* accepts any source with “gpt” in the name. We tested Google’s example and our expression against 29 source values: 10 from assistants and 19 control values that are not assistants. As a result, Google’s example classified 7 non-assistant values as AI and left out DeepSeek and Grok. Ours, however, got all 29 right. Review the list every quarter, because domains change.

How to build an AI traffic exploration in GA4

An exploration shows what the standard GA4 report hides: which pages AI traffic lands on and whether it converts. Use the free-form technique, with source and landing page in the rows. A filter with the same regex as the group isolates the assistants in the table.

1. Create the exploration. In the left menu, click Explore and open a blank exploration. The default technique is the free-form table.
2. Import the variables. In Variables, import Session source / medium, Session source and Landing page. For metrics, import Sessions, Engagement rate and Key events.
3. Build the table. Then drag Session source / medium and Landing page to Rows, and the metrics to Values.
4. Filter. In Filters, use Session source with “matches regex” and the same expression as the group.
5. Fix the date range. Finally, choose a custom date range, such as the last full month, so the exploration does not change when you reopen it.

Why look at landing pages?

For ChatGPT traffic in GA4, landing pages gained weight in 2026. That is because, in May, ChatGPT replaced footnote-style citations with clickable brand names, according to Similarweb. Before the change, 26% to 29% of ChatGPT referrals landed on the homepage. By late May, however, it was 62% to 63%. Similarweb does not state the geography of this data and sells AI traffic analytics tools. According to Similarweb, traffic spikes on the homepage or in Direct deserve a second look. For online stores, cross-reference landing pages with purchases and see how products get into AI answers.

What GA4 does not show as AI traffic

GA4 only classifies a click as AI traffic when it arrives with a readable source. It therefore leaves out three cases. First, clicks in AI Overviews and AI Mode count as organic search. Second, visits with no referrer and no UTM land in Direct. Finally, an answer that cites the brand without generating a click does not show up.

Situation	Where it shows up in GA4
Click on a link in ChatGPT	AI Assistant, Referral or Unassigned
Click in AI Overviews or AI Mode	Organic Search
Click in an app with no referrer or UTM	Direct
Link without UTM copied and pasted into the browser	Direct
Click in Perplexity	Referral, according to Blauer
Answer that cites the brand with no click	Does not show up

AI Overviews and AI Mode

GA4 does not separate clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode from regular search. A regex on the source does not solve it, because the source is still Google. The way forward is to track impressions for these features in Search Console. The guide on Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews shows how these features choose their sources.

Apps and visits with no referrer

According to GA4 help on direct traffic, (direct) / (none) is traffic without a clear referral source. In July 2025, Cloudflare observed that clicks in the native Claude app arrived without the referrer header. The company believes the same holds for other native apps. So, with no referrer and no UTM, these visits become Direct, and the custom group does not recover them.

How to combine GA4, Search Console, Bing and logs

Each tool covers part of the path. While GA4 shows the click and the conversion, Search Console shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Similarly, Bing Webmaster Tools shows citations in Copilot. Finally, logs show the pages assistants fetch at users’ request.

Source	What it shows	What it does not show
GA4	Visits and conversions from assistants	Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode on their own
Search Console	Impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode	Separate clicks from these features
Bing Webmaster Tools	Citations in Copilot and AI searches	Visits to the site
Server logs	Pages opened by ChatGPT-User and similar agents	Who clicked

What do Search Console and Bing show?

Search Console’s generative AI performance report reached all websites on August 31, 2026. It shows impressions by page, country, date and device. In addition, the same data still appears in the Performance report, under the Web search type. Our guide to AI Mode and AI Overviews data in Search Console shows how to read these numbers.

According to Microsoft, the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools shows citations by page. It covers Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partners. Grounding queries show a sample of the phrases the AI used to find the content.

What do logs show?

In logs, ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User and Claude-User mark pages opened because of a user’s question. OpenAI publishes the IP addresses of ChatGPT-User, which helps separate the real crawler from imitations. These hits are not clicks from people, but they show which pages the assistants opened to answer.

AI reads far more than it sends. Cloudflare Radar measures the traffic that passes through Cloudflare. In the week we analyzed for this guide, for example, OpenAI made about 1,700 crawl requests for each visit it sent. According to Cloudflare, the count only includes visits with a referrer, so the ratio may be inflated. On the other hand, you measure mentions and citations with fixed prompts. The step-by-step is in the guide on how to measure your brand’s mentions and citations in AI.

How to report AI traffic to the client

Report AI traffic from GA4 as a floor, not as the total. Show the sessions and conversions from the custom group and the month-over-month trend. Also include the two caveats: Google clicks in organic search and visits with no referrer in Direct. Compare only periods measured with the same channel rule.

1. Sessions and key events from the custom AI channel, by assistant.
2. Landing pages that receive the most AI traffic.
3. Generative AI impressions from Search Console for the same period.
4. Citations and grounding queries from Bing Webmaster Tools.
5. Hits from ChatGPT-User and similar agents in the logs, by page.
6. Presence in answers, measured with fixed prompts or with one of the GEO tools.

In general, expect small numbers. For example, Conductor analyzed 1,215 enterprise customer domains in the U.S. from May to September 2025. On those domains, AI brought 1.08% of traffic, and ChatGPT accounted for 87.4% of that AI traffic. Conductor sells an AI search optimization platform. To turn that floor into a financial return, see how to calculate SEO and GEO ROI. For agencies, this report is part of the package; see how to build and sell a GEO service.

The click is only the end of the path, because the brand first needs to appear in the answer. If the concept is new to you, start with the guide on what GEO is. For ChatGPT, which dominates this traffic, see how to show up in ChatGPT.

What we found in Portuguese-language guides on AI traffic in GA4

We ran 13 searches in Portuguese about AI traffic in GA4 and then analyzed the 4 guides that came up. Three came out after the channel launched, but only one mentions the AI Assistant channel. Only one includes a regex.

Only one warns that AI Overviews clicks count as organic search, and none mentions AI Mode. Three warn that some visits land in Direct. However, none explains the Unassigned slice. None mentions Search Console’s generative AI report or Bing’s AI Performance.

Frequently asked questions

Main sources

• Google Analytics, default channel group definitions (2026).
• Google Analytics, custom channel groups (2026).
• Google Analytics, What’s new in Google Analytics, May 13 note (2026).
• Search Engine Journal, Itamar Blauer on how the AI channel undercounts (2026).
• Search Console, Generative AI performance report (2026).
• Similarweb, AI traffic and citation statistics (2026).