ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI tools already send visitors to your site. Here is how to see AI traffic in GA4 in a couple of minutes, with no setup, and how to find the exact page that sent each visit when you need more detail.
Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition, change the table to Session source / medium and type ai-assistant in the search box. Since May 13, 2026, GA4 labels visits from tools like ChatGPT and Gemini this way on its own, so there is nothing to install.
Key takeaways
- GA4 tags visits from the AI tools it recognizes with the medium
ai-assistantand groups them in a channel called AI Assistant. - This started on May 13, 2026. Older visits from the same tools still show up as referrals.
- The Session source / medium view of the Traffic acquisition report shows every source, AI tools included.
- Part of your AI traffic slips through: Perplexity shows up as a referral, app visits land in Direct, and Google AI Mode counts as organic search.
- To see the exact URL a visit came from, use the Page referrer dimension in Explorations.
What counts as AI traffic in GA4
GA4 counts a visit as AI traffic when someone clicks a link inside an AI tool that Google recognizes. When that happens, GA4 sets the medium to ai-assistant, sets the campaign to (ai-assistant) and puts the visit in a channel called AI Assistant.
Google names ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot and Grok as examples. The list belongs to Google, so you can’t add or remove tools from it.
The channel only works from May 13, 2026 forward. If you look at earlier dates, the same visits appear as regular referrals, like chatgpt.com / referral. Keep that in mind before you read a jump in May as growth: part of it is just GA4 moving visits from one row to another.
How to see AI traffic in GA4, step by step
You don’t need Google Tag Manager, a plugin or a custom channel group for this. Every step below uses the standard reports that any GA4 property already has. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll start with a completely fresh template on a clean domain with no data, so you don’t get confused. But at the end of the tutorial, I’ll show you what the report looks like (and you’ll love it!), and hopefully, you won’t need any other tool for measuring AI traffic anymore.
Step 1: Open the Traffic acquisition report
In the left menu, go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. In some properties it sits under Reports > Life cycle > Acquisition.
By default, the table groups your visits by channel: Organic Search, Direct, Referral and so on. If AI tools sent you visits after May 13, 2026, you will already see a row called AI Assistant.
Step 2: Switch the table to Session source / medium
Channels are too broad to tell you who sent what. Click the dropdown above the first column (it says Session primary channel group) and choose Session source / medium.
Now every row is a real source: google / organic, reddit.com / referral, chatgpt.com / ai-assistant. Tick the checkboxes next to up to five rows to compare them in the chart above the table. In the image below, you’ll notice that the first row has no referrer. That’s common and usually means unattributed traffic. Part of that traffic comes from bots, but it can also hide valuable visits: AI traffic that comes from apps rather than web pages.
I left all referrers visible (I bet you’ve never seen anyone be this transparent about traffic sources) because I wanted you to notice the last one: android-app://. That’s how some apps identify themselves, but not all of them do. As far as I know, not a single LLM app identifies itself this way.
Step 3: Filter the table for measuring AI traffic only
Type ai-assistant in the search box above the table. Only the AI rows stay, and you can see sessions, engagement and key events for each tool. From now on, I’ll show you real data because you can do this if you don’t have any data. For this purpose, I chose a one month period, but you can choose whatever you want as with any GA4 report.
Search by tool name too, like chatgpt. The same tool can show up in more than one row (for example with a different medium), and you want to count all of them.
Step 4: See which pages AI tools send people to
Click the + next to the dimension dropdown and add Landing page + query string as a secondary dimension. Each row now shows the source and the page where the visit started.
This is the most useful view in the whole report. It tells you which of your pages AI tools recommend, and those are the pages worth improving first.
Step 5: Save the report so it opens this way
If you check AI traffic often, save this setup. Click the pencil icon (Customize report) in the top right and open Dimensions. Click the three dots next to Session source / medium, choose Set as default, then click Apply, Save and Save changes to current report.
From then on, the report opens with sources instead of channels. You need an Editor or Administrator role to do this, and the change applies to everyone who uses the property. If you prefer to keep the original report, choose Save as a new report instead. Google explains every option in its guide to customizing detail reports.
AI tools are already sending people to your site. Want those pages to turn visits into clients? Talk to Dorve.
Start a projectWhere AI traffic in GA4 goes missing
The AI Assistant channel undercounts AI traffic, because it only catches visits that arrive with a referrer from a tool on Google’s list. The rest lands in other channels, and you have to know where to look.
| Where it shows up | What lands there | Counted as AI? |
|---|---|---|
| AI Assistant | Visits from tools on Google’s list, from May 13, 2026 on. | Yes |
| Referral | Tools that are not on Google’s list, like Perplexity, and every AI visit from before May 13, 2026. | No |
| Direct | Visits from AI mobile apps and from copied links. They arrive with no referrer, so GA4 can’t tell where they came from. | No |
| Organic Search | Clicks from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. GA4 treats them as regular Google search. | No |
To find the tools Google doesn’t recognize, search the Session source / medium table for their names, like perplexity or claude. If you want all your AI traffic in one row, create a custom channel group with your own AI rule. Custom channel groups also apply to past data, which the built-in channel doesn’t do.
Direct traffic is the one gap you can’t close. A visit with no referrer carries no clue about where it came from, in GA4 or in any other tool.
How to see the full referring URL with Page referrer
Session source / medium only tells you the domain a visit came from. When you need the exact URL, use the Page referrer dimension. It is available in Explorations with no setup.
Step 1: Create a blank exploration
Click Explore in the left menu, then click Blank. GA4 opens an empty Free form exploration.
Step 2: Import Page referrer and Views
In the Variables column, click the + next to Dimensions, search for Page referrer, tick it and click Import. Then click the + next to Metrics, search for Views and import it too. If you don’t see Page referrer or Views, you can use the search box on top of the page.
Step 3: Build the table
Drag Page referrer into Rows and Views into Values. The table fills in on the right, with one row per referring URL.
Step 4: Remove your own domain
Page referrer also records clicks between your own pages, so your domain will fill most of the table. Under Filters, add Page referrer, choose does not contain and type your domain name.
To see AI tools only, use matches regex instead and paste this: .*(chatgpt|gemini|perplexity|copilot|claude).*
Most sites, ChatGPT included, only share their domain, not the full URL. That is how browsers handle referrers by default. So for AI tools you will see https://chatgpt.com/ and nothing more. GA4 never gets the conversation or the prompt. Sites that do share the full URL will show up here with the exact page.
What to do with your AI traffic in GA4
Seeing AI traffic in GA4 is the easy part. What matters is what those visitors do once they land.
People who come from ChatGPT or Gemini usually arrive with a clear question, and part of the answer already in their head. They land on one page, often deep in your site, and decide fast. If that page is slow, vague or has no clear next step, they leave.
Start with the landing pages from Step 4. For each one, check three things: does it answer the question in the first lines, does it load fast on a phone, and does it tell people what to do next. That is the same work we do in our UX research and SEO projects, focused on the pages AI tools already send people to.
Want to know what your AI visitors do after they land, and how to turn more of them into clients? Tell us about your site.
Start a projectFAQ about AI traffic in GA4
Yes. Since May 13, 2026, visits from ChatGPT that arrive with a referrer show up as chatgpt.com / ai-assistant, inside the AI Assistant channel. You don’t need to set anything up.
There are two usual reasons. The visits happened before May 13, 2026, when the AI Assistant channel didn’t exist yet, or they came from a tool that is not on Google’s list, like Perplexity.
No. The prompt never reaches your site. At most, GA4 gets the domain of the AI tool, like https://chatgpt.com/.
No. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode count as google / organic, together with the rest of your Google search traffic.
Not to see AI traffic. The standard Traffic acquisition report is enough. A custom channel group helps if you want tools like Perplexity in the same bucket, or if you want to reclassify older data.