Google Analytics (GA4)

By default, GA4 lumps visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI platforms into the generic “Referral” channel. This guide creates a dedicated “Artificial Intelligence” channel so AI traffic shows up separately in your reports.

Time needed: ~5 minutes. Changes apply retroactively to historical data.

Setup

Open Channel Groups

Go to Admin (gear icon, bottom-left) > under Property settings, expand Data display > click Channel groups.

Click the blue “Create new channel group” button.

Open Channel Groups in GA4 Admin

Create the Channel Group

Name the group something descriptive (e.g., “With AI Traffic”). This creates a copy of all default channels that you can customize.

Click “Add new channel” to define your AI traffic channel.

Create new channel group in GA4

Configure the AI Channel

Set the channel name to Artificial Intelligence (or whatever label you prefer in reports).

Configure the condition:

Dimension: Source
Condition: matches regex
Value: paste the regex below

AI Source Regex


chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|perplexity\.ai|claude\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com|deepseek\.com|you\.com|meta\.ai|poe\.com

This covers the major AI platforms that drive the vast majority of referral traffic.

Click Apply, then Save channel.

Configure AI channel with regex in GA4

Reorder - Place AI Above Referral

This step is critical. GA4 assigns traffic to the first matching channel in the list. If “Referral” sits above your new AI channel, AI traffic will still get caught by Referral and never reach your custom channel.

Use the drag handles to move Artificial Intelligence directly above Referral, then save.

Reorder channels so AI is above Referral

Switch to the Custom Channel Group

Navigate to Reports > Life cycle > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

Click the dimension dropdown (the blue pill at the top of the table) and select Session Custom channel group.

Switch to custom channel group in GA4 report

View Your AI Traffic

You should now see Artificial Intelligence as its own row in the acquisition table, with Sessions, Users, Engagement Rate, and all other standard metrics broken out.

AI traffic visible as its own channel in GA4

Which Metrics to Track

Metric	Use	Detail
Sessions	Primary metric	Total visits from AI platforms. Most stable number for weekly trends.
Engagement Rate	Quality check	Sessions with 10+ seconds, 2+ pages, or a conversion. Compare against Organic Search.
New Users	Quarterly review	Whether AI platforms drive net-new audience.

GA4 undercounts AI traffic by an estimated 30-40%. Free-tier ChatGPT users and mobile AI apps often don’t send referrer headers, so those visits appear as “Direct”. Use Cloudflare tracking as a complementary signal.