Citino teamTo see AI search traffic in GA4, add a custom channel group with a channel for AI assistants. It collects visits referred by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and similar tools into one line, so you can see how many visits AI answers send, which pages they land on and what they convert to.
It is the visits side of AI search analytics. The other side, whether the answers name you at all, needs answer tracking, because most buyers who read an answer never click.
Where AI traffic goes in GA4 by default
GA4 sorts every session into a channel using its default rules. Visits from AI assistants mostly land in Referral, mixed with every other site that links to you, where they are easy to miss.
The Session source dimension shows the site that referred each session, so the AI visits are there: you just need to group them.
Step 1: Create an AI assistants channel
Google’s help page on custom channel groups includes an example for exactly this. In short:
- In Admin, open Channel groups and create a new custom channel group (or copy the default one).
- Add a channel and name it AI assistants.
- Add a condition on the source with matches regex, and enter a regex for the assistants you want to include.
- Move the AI assistants channel above Referral in the list, so those sessions are not claimed by Referral first.
- Save.
Google’s example uses a broad regex. A tighter one, matched on the session source, avoids catching unrelated sites whose names happen to contain “ai” or “gpt”. For example:
chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|perplexity\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|claude\.ai|copilot\.microsoft\.com
Check your own Session source report first and add any AI sources you actually see. Update the regex when assistants change their domains.
Step 2: Read the report
Open Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition and switch the primary dimension to your new channel group. For the AI assistants channel, look at:
| What to look at | Why |
|---|---|
| Sessions by source | Which assistants send visits, and how many |
| Landing pages | Which of your pages AI answers link to |
| Key events and conversions | Whether those visits turn into demos or sign-ups |
| Trend by month | Whether AI traffic is growing |
The landing pages are worth checking against your answer tracking. A page that AI assistants cite often but that sends few visits may be quoted without being clicked. A page that sends visits but is rarely cited may be linked for a different reason.
What GA4 cannot show you
| Gap | Why |
|---|---|
| Clicks from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | Google says these are counted within overall search traffic, so they appear as Google organic |
| Visits with no referrer | Some app clicks and copied links arrive without a source and land in Direct |
| Buyers who come back later | A buyer who reads an answer, then searches your name a week later, is counted as organic or direct |
| Answers that name you without a link | No click, no session, nothing in GA4 |
So the AI assistants channel is a floor, not the full effect. Report it that way, alongside how often the answers name you, which only answer tracking can show. How to track your brand’s visibility in ChatGPT covers that side.
Step 3: Report it honestly
- Report AI sessions and conversions as a floor. Say what the number misses.
- Show the trend, not one month. AI traffic is small for most sites, so single months swing.
- Put it next to visibility. Visits without visibility hide whether you are being recommended; visibility without visits hides whether it pays.
How to report AI visibility to leadership shows where this fits in a monthly report.
GA4 shows the buyers AI answers sent you. It cannot show the ones they sent to a competitor.
Where Citino helps
Citino is an AI search analytics tool. It asks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity your buyers’ questions every day, with Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude as add-ons, and connects to your own GA4 to show the sessions AI answers sent, matched to the prompts that sent them where that can be done reliably. Visits it cannot match are shown as unmatched rather than spread across prompts. See Attribution.