# How to track AI traffic in GA4: a channel for ChatGPT and others > In short: Create a custom channel group in GA4 (Admin, Data display, Channel groups), add a channel called AI assistants whose source matches a regular expression of assistant domains, and move it above Referral. Expect it to undercount: AI Overviews and AI Mode clicks arrive as Google organic, and most people who read an answer never click. Guide from Keats, published 2026-11-13, updated 2026-11-13. Canonical: https://getkeats.com/guides/ai-traffic-ga4 By default, GA4 files a visit from ChatGPT under Referral, next to a link from a partner's blog, and a visit from Gemini somewhere similar. Nobody looks there. A custom channel puts every assistant's visits in one line you can watch, and takes about ten minutes. ## Before you start You need the Editor role (or above) on the GA4 property. A standard property can have two custom channel groups besides the default one, and each group up to 50 channels, so check whether someone has already used the slots. ## Step 1: create a custom channel group 1. In GA4, go to **Admin**, then **Data display**, then **Channel groups**. 2. Click **Create new channel group**. GA4 starts you from a copy of the default group, which is what you want: every existing channel stays, and you add one. 3. Name it something like "Default + AI assistants". ## Step 2: add an AI assistants channel 1. Click **Add new channel** and name it **AI assistants**. 2. Click **Add condition group**, choose the dimension **Source**, and the match type **matches regex**. 3. Paste a regular expression covering the assistants' domains. One that covers the main ones as of November 2026: ``` .*(chatgpt|openai|perplexity|gemini\.google|copilot\.microsoft|claude\.ai|deepseek|meta\.ai).* ``` 4. Click **Save channel**. The leading and trailing `.*` make the pattern match a domain anywhere in the source value. Google's own help page includes an AI assistants example in the same spirit and notes you'll need to update it as assistants and their addresses change. ## Step 3: put it above Referral GA4 assigns each session to the first channel whose rules match, in order. Click **Reorder**, drag **AI assistants** above **Referral**, click **Apply**, then **Save group**. If you skip this, the visits stay in Referral. ## Step 4: read it In **Reports**, open **Acquisition**, then **Traffic acquisition**, and switch the dimension selector to your new channel group. Custom channel groups apply to past data as well, so you'll see history, not just visits from today. Look at more than sessions: engaged sessions, conversions and the landing pages. AI referrals often land deep in a site, on a specific product or help page, rather than the homepage, which tells you which pages the assistants cite. ## Also tag what you can Many links ChatGPT shows carry `utm_source=chatgpt.com`, which GA4 reads as the source, so those visits land in your channel even when the referrer is stripped. Some apps and desktop clients send no referrer at all, and those visits arrive as Direct. There's nothing to do about that except know it. ## What GA4 can't see **AI Overviews and AI Mode.** Clicks from Google's AI features arrive as ordinary Google organic traffic. Google says sites appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode are "included in the overall search traffic" in Search Console's Performance report, under the Web search type. Since August 2026 every site also has Search Console's generative AI report, which shows impressions from these features by page, but not clicks or queries. **The answers nobody clicked.** This is the big one. Pew Research Center found that people who saw an AI summary on Google went on to click an ordinary result in 8% of visits, and in 15% when no summary appeared. Assistants often answer the whole question, so a brand can be named in thousands of answers and receive a few dozen visits. Referral traffic is a floor, not a measure of [AI visibility](https://getkeats.com/glossary/ai-visibility). ## How to use the number - **Watch the trend, not the level.** A month-on-month rise in AI referrals, on the landing pages you worked on, is a good sign. - **Read it beside visibility.** Our guide to [measuring AI visibility](https://getkeats.com/guides/measure-ai-visibility) covers counting answers that name and cite you. Traffic and visibility moving together is a stronger story than either alone. - **Check the landing pages** (for shops, product pages usually lead; see [AEO for ecommerce](https://getkeats.com/guides/aeo-for-ecommerce)). If one page gets most of the AI traffic, it's the page assistants cite. Keep it current. - **Don't report it as reach.** A report that says "AI sent 140 visits" undersells work that got you named in most buying answers. For how ChatGPT decides which pages to link in the first place, see [how ChatGPT search picks sources](https://getkeats.com/guides/chatgpt-search-sources). For what Google's two AI features count where, see [AI Overviews vs AI Mode](https://getkeats.com/guides/ai-overviews-vs-ai-mode). ## Your agent does this Ask your agent: "Put our AI referral sessions from GA4 next to this month's Keats numbers and tell me whether they move together." It reads `get_trend` from Keats and the export you give it from GA4, and says plainly when traffic and visibility disagree. ## Sources - [Google Analytics Help: Custom channel groups](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/13051316), read 2026-11-13 - [Google Search Central: AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features), read 2026-11-13 - [Google Search Central blog: Introducing Search generative AI performance reports in Search Console](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/06/gen-ai-performance-reports), read 2026-11-13 - [Pew Research Center: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/), read 2026-11-13