# Tracking AI Assistant Referral Traffic in GA4 > See ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude sessions in GA4: the AI Assistant channel, a regex segment, the traps that drop data, and why counts are a floor. Source: https://aiseoperth.net.au/guides/ai-referral-traffic-ga4/ --- Guide # Tracking AI assistant referral traffic in GA4 How to see sessions from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude in Google Analytics 4: the AI Assistant default channel Google defines, the hosts to watch, a regex segment and custom channel, the configurations that silently drop the data, why the numbers are a floor, and what assisted conversions can and cannot prove. Author Dorian Menard, founder of Search Scope Published 9 September 2026 Reading time 8 min ## Set this up before the work starts Without a baseline, six months of AI search work produces numbers with nothing to compare against. The setup takes under an hour. Understanding what the numbers mean is the harder half, and it is where this guide spends most of its time. ## What Google Analytics now does by default DOCUMENTED Google Analytics 4 defines a default channel called **AI Assistant**: “the channel by which users arrive at your site from sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot, or Grok”. Its rule is that the medium exactly matches `ai-assistant`; when a session’s referrer matches a recognised AI assistant source, GA4 sets the medium to `ai-assistant` and the campaign to `(ai-assistant)`. So in a current property, assistant referrals that carry a referrer are grouped for you under Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, with the primary dimension set to Session default channel group. Two caveats. The list of sources Google recognises is Google’s and changes; a new assistant may land in Referral until it is added. And the channel only sees sessions that arrive with a referrer at all, which is the floor problem below. ## The hosts to watch Whether or not the default channel catches them, these are the hostnames assistant referrals carry when a user clicks an attribution link: Host Surface chatgpt.com ChatGPT, including its search features perplexity.ai Perplexity gemini.google.com Gemini app copilot.microsoft.com Microsoft Copilot claude.ai Claude Review the list quarterly. New hosts appear as products change. ## Finding them in GA4 Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Set the primary dimension to Session source and filter for one of the hosts above, or set it to Session default channel group and look for AI Assistant. If nothing appears, check two things before concluding there is none: the date range (these numbers are small and a seven-day window may genuinely be zero) and the consent configuration (a banner that blocks analytics until acceptance hides every non-consenting session, and small channels lose the largest share). ## Building a reusable view - **Exploration segment.** Explore, blank exploration, new segment scoped to Session, condition Session source matches regex `chatgpt\.com|perplexity\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com|claude\.ai`. Name it “AI assistants” and apply it to a free-form table with landing page as the row and sessions, engaged sessions and key events as values. - **Custom channel group.** Admin, Data display, Channel groups. Create one based on the default, add a channel “AI assistants” positioned above Referral, using the same regex against Source. This catches hosts the default AI Assistant rule does not yet recognise and makes the channel available in standard reports. The landing-page dimension is the useful one. It shows which pages assistants send people to, which often contradicts expectations. ## Why the numbers look small INFERRED Expect single or double digits a month for most Perth businesses, even where the work has an effect, for four reasons none of which better configuration fixes: 1. Most AI-influenced journeys have no click. The assistant names three providers; the user reads, forms an impression and searches the brand later. That session arrives as branded organic or direct. 2. Attribution links are one option among several, and people read the answer far more often than they follow its sources. 3. Some sessions carry no referrer. App and desktop clients can strip it, and those sessions arrive as direct. 4. The influence is often several steps back: a conversation in week one shapes a shortlist, the enquiry arrives in week five through a branded search. Treat the referral count as a floor and its movement as directional. ## Things that quietly break the tracking - **Consent mode.** Sessions from users who never accept are missing entirely; small channels lose most. - **Internal traffic filters.** A stale IP range from a previous office removes real sessions. - **Cross-domain gaps.** An enquiry form on a subdomain not configured for cross-domain measurement restarts the session at the handover, and the original referrer is lost right before the conversion. - **Referral exclusions.** An assistant host added to the referral exclusion list turns those sessions into direct. Check nobody did this to tidy the report. The most common cause of a zero is one of these, not an absence of visitors. ## What assisted conversions can and cannot prove Attribution paths show whether an AI-sourced session participated anywhere in a converting journey, which is the strongest analytics evidence available for this channel. They cannot prove the interaction caused the conversion, and they cannot see impressions: the largest part of AI influence is a name read without a click, invisible to analytics by construction. The honest framing is that referral and assisted figures are a visible fraction of a larger effect with the fraction unknown. Anyone quoting a precise multiplier is inventing it. ## Filling the gap with proxy signals - **Branded search in Search Console.** Impressions and clicks for queries containing the business name, read as direction over months. DOCUMENTED Google’s AI feature clicks also sit inside Search Console’s Web totals, so branded movement is the closest available proxy for shortlist inclusion on Google. - **Direct sessions to deep pages.** A visitor landing directly on a specific guide or service page was usually given the URL by something. Some of that is email; a steady rise alongside AI work is worth noting. - **An enquiry-form question.** “How did you hear about us?” with an explicit AI assistant option. Self-reported and imperfect, and still better data than the platform can natively provide. ## What to report, and how often Monthly: sessions and key events from the AI assistants channel with the trend, top landing pages from that channel, branded organic clicks as a supporting line, and work completed. Quarterly: prompt-set movement from the [repeated-run baseline](https://aiseoperth.net.au/guides/measuring-ai-search-visibility/). State the under-count in the report itself, because the person reading it in six months will not remember the conversation. ## What is documented and what is inferred - **Documented:** GA4’s AI Assistant default channel and its rule; Search Console’s treatment of AI feature traffic. - **Inferred:** the reasons referral counts are a floor; the configuration failures; the proxy signals. - **Not established:** any Perth-specific referral volume. ## Related pages - [ Guide Measuring AI search visibility What referrals do and do not tell you. ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/guides/measuring-ai-search-visibility/) - [ Reference ChatGPT SEO How ChatGPT reaches and shows sources. ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/chatgpt-seo/) - [ Guide AI Overviews and organic traffic The Google-side question. ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/guides/ai-overviews-organic-traffic/) ## Sources 1. [Default channel group](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9756891), Google Analytics Help (read 9 September 2026) DOCUMENTED 2. [AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features), Google Search Central (read 9 September 2026) DOCUMENTED AI Overview and AI Mode traffic is reported within Search Console's Web search type. On this page - [Set this up before the work starts](#set-this-up-before-the-work-starts) - [What Google Analytics now does by default](#what-google-analytics-now-does-by-default) - [The hosts to watch](#the-hosts-to-watch) - [Finding them in GA4](#finding-them-in-ga4) - [Building a reusable view](#building-a-reusable-view) - [Why the numbers look small](#why-the-numbers-look-small) - [Things that quietly break the tracking](#things-that-quietly-break-the-tracking) - [What assisted conversions can and cannot prove](#what-assisted-conversions-can-and-cannot-prove) - [Filling the gap with proxy signals](#filling-the-gap-with-proxy-signals) - [What to report, and how often](#what-to-report-and-how-often) - [What is documented and what is inferred](#what-is-documented-and-what-is-inferred) - [Sources](#sources) Evidence labels Claims on this page are labelled DOCUMENTED, OBSERVED, TESTED, INFERRED or HYPOTHESIS. [What the labels mean](https://aiseoperth.net.au/methodology/#evidence-labels). Published by Search Scope AI SEO Perth is published by Search Scope, a Perth SEO consultancy founded by Dorian Menard. Search Scope provides commercial SEO and AI search optimisation services; this website is maintained as its specialist Perth AI search research and reference publication. [Search Scope](https://searchscope.com.au/)