Every day, people in your target audience discover that AI chatbots are a great way to get information. A lot of times, these people just want a quick answer. They don’t really want to visit a website.
But other times, they’re looking for detailed information or they really need help. These AI searches have “visit-website intent.” When they see you in AI responses and click through to your website, you can measure that referral traffic in GA4.
In this video, we show how to track website traffic from AI using GA4. We made it as simple as possible. This article breaks down the steps and goes a little farther. Here we’ll use three methods:
- GA4 report (super fast, some data)
- GA4 exploration (detailed, more data)
- GA4 custom channel group (a bit more complex, but useful everywhere!)
It’s kinda like small, medium and large. The first one is just a few clicks. The second one let’s you flex your GA4 skills a bit more. The final method is a configuration method that you’ll only need to do once, and is more pro-level.
Note: There is a limit to all of these reports. Some users are on AI apps, not websites, and traffic from apps is categorized as “Direct traffic” in GA4. So it’s not possible to accurately report all AI traffic separately. That’s a bummer but GA4 isn’t totally accurate anyway. GA4 underreports all traffic.
1. Acquisition Report: Track AI traffic and leads
The fastest, simplest way! Literally four clicks and four keystrokes…
- Go to the Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report.
- Set a long date range
- Change the dropdown at the top of the first column to “Session source / medium” (that dropdown shows what GA4 kids call the “primary dimension”)
- Search for “chat” into the little search box above that first column.
That’s it. Now you’re looking at traffic (and leads if there are any) from the most popular AI tool. Here’s what the GA4 report for referral AI traffic from ChatGPT will look like:
Don’t be surprised if there isn’t much there yet. This is a new channel. If there is traffic, probably the trend line shows that most of the traffic is very recent. In the screenshot above, you can see that there was almost no traffic from ChatGPT at all and then… a steady stream.
No traffic from AI at all? Check out our 8 ways to get AI to recommend your brand.
You can try searching for the names of the other AIs and see referral traffic from any of them. But there are better ways to do that. It’s also an opportunity for us to level-up our GA4 skills…
2. GA4 exploration: Check landing pages from AI sources
This method is a bit fancier. If it’s easier, you can watch me do it in the video above (or here). We’ll create a exploration that shows AI referral traffic to our various landing pages. GA4 Explorations are custom reports that are saved in the “Explore” section, so you can go back to them again and again. They’re also very flexible (and fun) to make.
Here’s a preview what the final GA4 exploration will look like:
Here are the steps for making a GA4 exploration that tracks traffic from AI sources:
- Click on the Explore icon on the far left, then click “Blank” to create a new exploration
- In the top left, give your exploration a name, such as “Traffic from AI platforms”
- Set a long date range, such as “Last 12 months”
Now we’ll add the dimensions and metrics…
- Click the plus sign (+) next to DIMENSIONS
- Search for then select “Page referrer” and “Landing page + query string” then click “Confirm”
- Click the plus sign (+) next to METRICS
- Search for then select “Sessions” then click “Confirm”
Next we’ll add those to the report…
- Drop or select “Landing page + query string” in the ROWS box
- Drop or select “Page referrer” in the COLUMNS box
- Drop or select “Sessions” in the VALUES box
Finally, we’ll create a filter so it only shows AI traffic
- Drop or select “Page referrer” in the FILTERS box
- For Conditions, select “matches regex”
- Copy and paste the following regular expression into the “Enter expression” box and click “Apply”
^https:\/\/(www\.meta\.ai|www\.perplexity\.ai|chat\.openai\.com|claude\.ai|chat\.mistral\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|bard\.google\.com|chatgpt\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com)(\/.*)?$
Look at this RegEx closely. It’s weird but not that weird. This string simply describes the domains of all of the major, current generative AI platforms: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, etc. It does not show traffic from Google’s AI Overviews or AI Mode, which is still categorized as organic traffic.
I like to change my CELL TYPE to “Heat map” but that’s just my personal preference. You can also try adding more metrics (“Engagement rate” and “Session key event rate”) and use Page referrer as a ROW instead of a COLUMN.
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Jes Scholz, Organic Marketing Consultant“While traffic contributions are low, setting up GA4 reporting using a regex on page referrer sessions is vital to understanding in which chatbots your brand is visible. Because when these traffic sources are hockey sticks (not if, when) you need to have already put in the work on any surface where you brand was not well optimized.“ |
Bonus! Want to see the trend? Add a new tab to this exploration (no need to make a new one on the same topic) and make it a line chart with “Page referrer” as the BREAKDOWN. Now you can see AI referral traffic growing over time. It probably looks something like this: low numbers rising quickly.
Look closely at these reports. Which AI platforms are sending the most traffic? Which pages attract traffic from which platforms? Is there a “key event rate” showing yet? Which AI platforms are sending you the most traffic? The fastest growing traffic.
Do you see lots of (not set) as the landing pages? There are several possible reasons for that. None of them are concerning. Here, GA4 expert, Dana DiTomaso explains:
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Dana DiTomaso, Kick Point“There are a few reasons why you have (not set) traffic in GA4 but the most common reason is that you have people who leave your website open for a long time. If someone leaves your website open long enough in their tabs that their GA4 session times out, GA4 would need a page refresh in order to start up a new session. But think of how you revisit a tab that you’ve had open for a while — you probably don’t refresh it before scrolling or clicking around, right? When that happens, GA4 can’t set the source, medium, or landing page for that new session, and that’s how you end up with (not set) traffic. It isn’t great and I wish GA4 would handle it differently but for now that’s what we’re stuck with.” |
3. Track AI traffic with a GA4 custom channel group.
There are a lot of ways to customize GA4. My friend Dana DiTomaso knows them all. We had a short conversation at a recent conference about AI as a traffic source. A few days later she sends an email with a great idea and some simple instructions. Here is her post on the topic. And here’s how it works…
In GA4, the “channel groups” are the ways that Analytics categorizes traffic sources. The defaults are good, but they don’t account for AI traffic. But you can create a new channel group that has an AI channel that has AI as a channel, then use this to see traffic from AI sources separately.
Tip: Creating and changing channel groups doesn’t change the underlying data in Google Analytics. If something isn’t working for you, you can just delete it. You’re not going to break anything.
First we’ll make a new channel group. Then we’ll make a new channel inside it.
- Click the gear in the bottom right to get to the Admin section. Then in the Data display box, click “Channel groups”
- Click the “Create new channel group” button. Name your group. I named mine “AI Sources Group”
- Click the “Add new channel” button. Name your channel. I named mine “AI Tools”
- For the channel conditions, set the “Source” to “matches regex” then copy and paste in the following regular expression. Again, this simply describes websites that are AI tools and potential sources of traffic.
^https:\/\/(www\.meta\.ai|www\.perplexity\.ai|chat\.openai\.com|claude\.ai|chat\.mistral\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|bard\.google\.com|chatgpt\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com)(\/.*)?$
- Save channel
- Click “Reorder” and drag your new channel up, so it’s just above the Referral channel.
Note: The order is important! Google Analytics looks at the top of this list first. If the session doesn’t meet the criteria of the first channel, it goes to the next channel. Our goal is to intercept referral traffic from AI sources and categorize it separately, so we want Analytics to consider our new channel before categorizing the session as just another referral.
- Click “Apply” then click “Save Group”
Give it a few minutes, then check your Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report. Choose a nice long date range then from the dropdown above the first column, select your new channel group as the primary dimension.
The report will look something like this:
I highlighted the traffic and the conversions to show the number of visits and leads generated from AI sources. See anything yet? Remember, this is just the beginning…
The future of content discovery
Until recently, search engines and social media were really the only channels for content discovery. And now, AI is a new channel for content discovery. Depending on the information need, it may become a standard way to get answers. Which answers? We did some AI vs Google research and we’re starting to see the trends.
Like it or not, it’s a new part of your SEO strategy. Eventually, your favorite SEO tool will report on traffic from AI search.
Yes, it’s new. But if you’ve been in digital for a while, you’re used to disruption. Remember when social media was new? All the same questions were asked. What will work? Who owns it? How will results be measured?
Nice work! We had some key questions and GA4 showed us the answers:
- What content attracts traffic from AI sources?
- Which AIs are sending us traffic? How is that changing?
- Are AI visitors becoming leads?
One of the biggest questions in digital marketing is How can we we get AI to mention our content and recommend our brands? To answer that last question and prepare for this new area of digital marketing, we’ve put together this video. It shows how to get AI to recommend your content and your brand:
Finally, let’s remember that search engines, social media and now AI chatbots are great, but there are other ways to connect with an audience. Some of those have nothing to do with algorithms. They cut out the big tech middleman. They are hard to disrupt.
These channels are all about humans, relationships, fans and friends…
