How to track ChatGPT and AI traffic, in GA4 and beyond.

The quick answer

1. Look at GA4's AI Assistant channel. In Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition, find the AI Assistant row. It has existed since May 13, 2026 and covers the assistants on Google's own list.
2. Add a channel for every assistant. A custom channel group with the regex below also counts assistants Google may leave out, links tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com and visits from before May 2026.
3. Use Search Console for Google's own AI features. GA4 counts clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode as Organic Search. Search Console's Generative AI performance report shows their impressions.
4. Look outside GA4 for AI crawlers. GPTBot, ChatGPT-User and most other AI crawlers never run the GA4 tag. Server logs and crawler reports show them.

How AI visits reach your site

When someone clicks a link in an AI answer, the visit reaches your site in one of three ways:

• With a referrer. The browser tells your site where the visitor came from, such as chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai.
• With a tag. OpenAI says ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links in its search results. Of the assistants we checked, OpenAI is the only one that documents a tag, and it mentions no utm_medium.
• With neither. Analytics makers such as Fathom and Matomo report that AI apps, especially on mobile, often open links without sending a referrer. Without a tag, those visits look like Direct traffic.

The table lists the sources OneLence matches for the 14 assistants it recognizes. Apart from ChatGPT's tag, the assistants don't document what their links send, so treat it as what to look for rather than each maker's promise.

Bare names such as chatgpt or perplexity appear when a link is tagged with that utm_source. bard.google.com is Gemini's former address, and NotebookLM and AI Studio are Google's other AI apps.

Find AI traffic in GA4's AI Assistant channel

On May 13, 2026, Google added an AI Assistant channel to GA4's default channel group. When a visit's referrer is on Google's list of AI assistants, GA4 sets its medium to ai-assistant and its campaign to (ai-assistant), and the visit lands in the AI Assistant channel. Google names ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, DeepSeek and Grok as examples but doesn't publish the full list. The channel leaves out Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, which stay in Organic Search.

1. In GA4, open Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition.
2. The table groups sessions by channel (Session primary channel group). Find the AI Assistant row.
3. To see which assistant sent each visit, add Session source as a secondary dimension with the + next to the dimension name.
4. To see conversions, open the menu in the Key events column, choose your key event, such as purchase or sign_up, and compare the session key event rate with your other channels.

Google doesn't say whether the channel reclassified visits from before May 13, 2026, or how it groups links tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com, which carry a source but no medium. To check the second, look for chatgpt.com / (not set) under Session source / medium. A channel of your own covers both.

Count every assistant with a custom channel group

A custom channel group applies to your past data, and its order decides where each visit goes: GA4 puts a visit in the first channel whose definition it matches. You need the Editor role or higher, and a standard GA4 property can have two custom channel groups.

1. In Admin, under Data display, click Channel groups.
2. Click Create new channel group, which starts as a copy of the default group, and name it, for example "Channels with AI".
3. Add a new channel named AI (all assistants). Click + Add condition group, choose Source and matches regex, and paste the regex below.
4. Click Reorder, drag AI (all assistants) above AI Assistant and Referral, and click Apply.
5. Click Save group.
6. In Traffic acquisition, choose your new channel group as the primary dimension.

^(.*\.)?(chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|chatgpt|perplexity\.ai|perplexity|claude\.ai|claude|gemini\.google\.com|bard\.google\.com|notebooklm\.google\.com|aistudio\.google\.com|gemini|copilot\.microsoft\.com|copilot\.cloud\.microsoft|copilot|meta\.ai|grok\.com|grok|chat\.deepseek\.com|deepseek|chat\.mistral\.ai|chat\.qwen\.ai|tongyi\.aliyun\.com|kimi\.com|kimi\.moonshot\.cn|kimi\.ai|duck\.ai|you\.com|phind\.com)$

The regex lists the sources in the table above. GA4 regex is a full match by default, so the pattern names each source exactly, and (.*\.)? allows subdomains such as www. If sessions still land in GA4's own AI Assistant channel below yours, add their sources from Session source to the regex, and do the same for other AI sources you find under Referral, such as poe.com.

What GA4 can't see

• Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. GA4 counts their clicks as Organic Search, and Microsoft's Clarity docs note that they share google.com as the referrer with regular search. Search Console includes their clicks and impressions in the Web search type of its Performance report. Its Generative AI performance report shows their impressions by page, country, device and date, for both features together.
• Clicks without a referrer or tag. They count as Direct, whichever assistant they came from.
• AI crawlers and answer fetches. GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and most other AI crawlers download pages without running JavaScript, and GA4 excludes known bots anyway. ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and Perplexity-User fetch a page while answering someone, a sign that an answer is drawing on it. Server logs and your CDN's bot reports show them. See the AI crawler guides and ChatGPT-User, GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot, and check access with the robots.txt checker for AI crawlers.
• Visits that come back later. Someone who reads an answer and later searches for your brand or types your address counts as Organic Search or Direct. It can show up as more branded searches in Search Console.

Other tools that show AI traffic

Several analytics and webmaster tools now report AI traffic on their own. What each maker documented on October 7, 2026:

The citation reports in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools show where AI features display your pages, while the analytics tools count the visits. For a comparison of tools that also track what AI answers say about you, see AI visibility tools compared.

Where OneLence fits

OneLence helps marketing teams find growth opportunities, know what to do next, and grow more efficiently without simply spending more. Its AI visibility report follows AI traffic from the crawler to the customer, with no regex to maintain:

• Visitors from 14 assistants, recognized by referrer or utm_source: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Meta AI, Grok, DeepSeek, Le Chat, Qwen, Kimi, Duck.ai, You.com and Phind, each in its own row.
• Their conversions: signups and purchases on the same site within 28 days of an AI visit, for every assistant and every page.
• What happens before the click: which AI crawlers read each page and when an assistant fetches it while answering someone, once your server reports page requests to OneLence.
• AI answers, rolling out: whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode name and link you for the questions you track, including the two Google features GA4 can't separate.

AI visibility is in beta on the Premium and Scale plans, at no extra charge during the beta, and you can try it in the 7-day free trial. The same data is available in Claude and ChatGPT through the OneLence MCP server. See OneLence AI visibility.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and how we checked

We read Google's, OpenAI's and Microsoft's documentation and each analytics maker's own docs or changelog on October 7, 2026. Where only analytics makers say something, such as AI apps sending no referrer, the page names them. Google's Help Center pages carry no dates, and these products change often, so follow the links for current details.

• Google Analytics Help: Default channel group
• Google Analytics Help: What's new (AI Assistant traffic measurement, May 13, 2026)
• Google Analytics Help: Custom channel groups
• Google Analytics Help: About regular expressions
• Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report
• Google Search Central: AI features and your website
• OpenAI Help Center: Publishers and Developers FAQ
• Bing Webmaster Blog: AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools
• Microsoft Learn: Clarity AI channel groups
• Microsoft Learn: Clarity FAQ

Want visitors from AI and their conversions without maintaining a regex? Start the 7-day free trial or see OneLence AI visibility.