How to track ChatGPT and AI traffic in Google Analytics 4

More and more people ask ChatGPT "who's a good mechanic near me" or "who builds websites for dental practices" before they ever search Google. If your business is in the answer and they click, the visit reaches Google Analytics. The question is where it lands and what you do with it. Here's how to find it in GA4, what stays hidden, and how to fill the gaps.

Where an AI visit ends up

It depends on where it comes from:

The first row is new. The rest explain why the GA4 number is always lower than your real AI traffic.

The AI Assistant channel

Since May 2026, GA4's default channel group has a channel called AI Assistant. Google defines it as visits from AI chat tools and names ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot and Grok as examples. A visit goes there when its referrer is on a list Google maintains; the medium then becomes ai-assistant and the campaign (ai-assistant). There's nothing to set up.

To see it: Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition, with the "Session default channel group" dimension. To see each assistant separately, switch to "Session source": ChatGPT visits usually show as chatgpt.com, because ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to its links.

What the channel misses

Three gaps:

1. Assistants not on Google's list. The documentation names five; Perplexity and Claude aren't among them, so their visits can stay in Referral.
2. Copied links. Anyone who copies a URL from a chat and pastes it into the browser lands in Direct. So do some mobile apps that don't pass a referrer.
3. Visitors who decline cookies. If a visitor refuses analytics cookies, GA4 doesn't record the session in full (or models it, with Consent Mode). Details are in our Consent Mode v2 guide.

A custom channel group in five minutes

To catch the missing assistants, create a custom channel group:

1. Admin → Data display → Channel groups → Create new channel group. Start from a copy of the default group.
2. Add a new channel, for example "AI assistants", with the condition "Source" → "matches regex":

chatgpt\.com|openai|perplexity|claude\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com|deepseek|grok|meta\.ai|mistral

3. Move the channel above Referral. GA4 puts a visit in the first channel it matches, top to bottom.
4. Save. The group applies to past data too, not just from now on.

A standard GA4 property can have two custom channel groups besides the default one, with up to 50 channels each. The list of assistants changes often, so review the regex every few months by looking for new domains under "Session source".

Which pages and enquiries AI brings

The number of visits matters less than what visitors do. In the acquisition report:

• add the secondary dimension "Landing page" to see where AI visitors arrive. Usually it's pricing pages, specific service pages or articles with clear answers;
• look at the "Key events" column: if you've marked form submissions, phone clicks or bookings, you'll see how many enquiries each channel brings;
• compare their rate with Organic Search. AI visitors have already read a summary and often arrive with clearer intent.

If you haven't set up key events, start there. Without them, any traffic report tells you how many people came in, not how many asked for something. What to measure on a site that doesn't convert is in website not getting leads.

Traffic from Google's own AI

For AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google Analytics won't help, because it folds them into organic traffic. Search Console is the place. Since 31 August 2026, every site has a separate report for generative AI features: it shows how often your pages appeared in those answers, by page, country, device and date. Clicks and queries aren't included. What these features mean for your site is covered in Google AI Mode and AI Overviews.

Ask your customers

Analytics only sees what passes through the browser. The rest you learn by asking:

• add an optional "How did you hear about us?" field to your contact form, with options such as Google, Google Maps, ChatGPT or another AI assistant, referral, social media, other;
• on the phone, ask during the first call and record the answer in the same place, for example your CRM;
• once a month, put the two numbers side by side: what GA4 sees and what customers tell you.

The gap is usually large. Many people hear about a business from an AI assistant, then search Google for it by name. GA4 records that visit as organic or direct, even though the decision was made in the chat. How to improve your chances of being recommended is in how to show up in ChatGPT and AI Overviews.

On the websites we build, we set up GA4 at launch with key events (form, phone, booking), the AI assistant channel group and Search Console, so you can see where enquiries come from in the first month. Details are on our web design page.