How to see AI-referred visitors in GA4

In Google Analytics 4 (GA4) you can now see visitors from AI assistants with a ready-made channel: the AI Assistant row in the Session default channel group column of Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. Google announced the channel in its release notes on 13 May 2026. Clicks from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode do not go into it; they are counted in Organic Search.

Does GA4 show AI traffic separately?

Yes, but not all of it. The 13 May 2026 entry in Google's Analytics release notes says GA4 now has a dedicated way to measure traffic from popular AI assistants, and that visits from chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude appear in a new AI Assistant channel in the default channel group.

The entry lists three changes:

• Medium: a new ai-assistant value is assigned automatically when the referrer matches a recognised AI assistant.
• Channel group: these visits are categorised under the AI Assistant channel.
• Campaign: traffic from these sources gets the campaign name (ai-assistant).

The default channel group page describes the channel as users arriving "from sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot, or Grok" and adds one exclusion: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode are not in it. Default channel groups can't be edited.

How do I find the AI Assistant channel in a report?

1. Open Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition in GA4.
2. Set the date range to after 13 May 2026.
3. The first column should be Session default channel group. Look for an AI Assistant row.
4. To see which assistant sent the visit, change the primary dimension to Session source or add it as a secondary dimension. In the same place you can filter Session medium for ai-assistant.

If you do not see the row, either no session from a recognised assistant fell in your range, or the channel is not yet working on your property. We could not tell which from Google's documents (see below).

Which sources go into this channel, and which do not?

Google does not publish the full list of names. Treat the "Gemini" row with care: the channel page names Gemini but explicitly excludes AI Mode inside Google Search.

Which pages do AI visitors land on?

For a per-page view, open a blank exploration under Explorations:

• Rows: Landing page
• Filter: Session default channel group = AI Assistant
• Values: Sessions, Engaged sessions, Key events

Per Google, Landing page is the path of the first page view in a session, filled in automatically. Engaged sessions are sessions that lasted 10 seconds or longer, had one or more conversion events, or had two or more page views. Together the three columns answer "did they arrive, did they stay, did they do something".

On a small site the numbers will be tiny. Do not conclude "this page wins in AI" from a handful of sessions.

What if the channel is missing or Perplexity is not there?

Set up a custom channel group. Google's channel-groups page gives an "AI assistants" example. The steps follow that page:

1. Go to Admin > Data display > Channel groups and choose Create new channel group. It starts as a copy of the default group. You need at least the Editor role on the property.
2. Add a new channel and call it "AI assistants".
3. Give it a "matches regex" condition on the source (Source).
4. Drag the channel above Referral in the list. Google's rule: a session goes into the first channel it matches, in order. You may also place it above Organic Search.
5. In Acquisition > Traffic acquisition, choose the new group as the primary or secondary dimension.

Google's example regex looks for ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude and Perplexity. Rather than copying it, we suggest checking your own property's Session source list and narrowing it. A starting draft, which we have not tested:

.*(chatgpt|perplexity|copilot|claude|gemini).*

Test in an exploration that the expression matches your source names before you trust it; a broad word like "gemini" may catch a source you did not expect. Google's note agrees on one point: if the assistants or their URLs change, update the expression.

A custom group has one advantage: per Google, custom channel groups can be applied to your reports retroactively, so you can see data from before the new channel existed under the same rule. The downsides: custom channel groups are not in the BigQuery export schema, and you maintain the regex yourself.

Where do I see traffic from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode?

Not as a separate row in GA4; Google writes those clicks into Organic Search. Search Console does not separate them cleanly either: Google's AI features guide says sites appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console and reported in the Performance report under the "Web" search type.

Search Console counting rules (Google's help page):

• In AI Mode, clicking a link to an external page counts as a click.
• A follow-up question in AI Mode is treated as a new query; impression, position and click data in the new response count under that new query.
• In AI Overviews, clicking a link to an external page also counts as a click, and all links in the overview get the same position.

So you have no filter that splits "AI" from "classic results" for Google's AI features. We did not find such a filter in the pages we read on 22 October 2026.

Why do Search Console and GA4 not match?

Google's guide on using Search Console and Analytics data together lists reasons for the gap between clicks and sessions. All of them apply to AI traffic too:

• GA4 measures with a tag on your page. If the tag is missing, or a user declines tracking, GA4 does not see the visit; Search Console processes every property the same way.
• Time zone: you choose it in GA4; Search Console defaults to Pacific Time.
• Attribution: Search Console counts every click; GA4 has three attribution models.

So do not try to make the two numbers equal. Read the trend.

What could we not verify?

• Whether ChatGPT links carry utm_source. We tried to open OpenAI's help pages and got a 403 error, so we left that claim out. Read the source name from your own Session source list.
• Whether Perplexity and Claude are in the default channel. The release note does not name Perplexity; the channel page does not name Claude. Check your data.
• Whether the channel was applied to past data. The release note does not say.
• We did not run the steps on a live GA4 property. The menu paths are as written in Google's documents.

How do I measure a brand that is mentioned but not clicked?

GA4 shows only those who click. Measuring whether your brand is mentioned in AI answers is a separate job, described in How AI answers pick which brands to name, and how we track it weekly. To follow AI bots arriving at your server, use the log method in AI bots in your server log; those are bot requests, not human visitors.

Frequently asked questions