GA4 AI traffic: how to see how many visitors come from ChatGPT and Gemini

GA4 AI traffic no longer has to be dug out of a messy list of referring sites. Since 13 May 2026, Google Analytics 4 has placed visits from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude in a separate AI Assistant channel. You will find it in the Traffic acquisition report next to organic search and social media. One thing surprises most people: clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode inside Google do not belong to this channel, GA4 counts them as Organic Search. How often your site appeared in those Google answers only shows up in Search Console.

Below you will find what Google changed in measurement in 2026, where exactly you see AI traffic in GA4, what it leaves out and how to turn it into a simple monthly overview. How AI search changes the way people behave is covered in our article on Google AI Mode and its impact on your website. How to get into AI Overviews answers is described in Google AI Overviews and your SEO. If you want measurement and SEO set up properly from the start, take a look at our SEO optimisation service.

GA4 AI traffic: what changed in 2026

During 2026 Google gradually adjusted GA4 and Search Console so that you finally see AI traffic separately from everything else.

Before, you had to look for chatbot visits among ordinary referring sites and piece them together by hand with source filters. According to the official Google Analytics release notes and the Google Search Central blog, this is what changed:

Date	Change	Tool	What it gives you
13 May 2026	AI Assistant channel	GA4	Visits from AI assistants in a separate row of the acquisition report
3 June 2026	Generative AI performance report	Search Console	Impressions of your site in AI Overviews and AI Mode, at first only for some sites
11 June 2026	Source Group dimension	GA4	Unified source names including the ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Perplexity groups, also filled in retroactively
31 August 2026	Generative AI performance report for all sites	Search Console	The same report available to websites worldwide
9 September 2026	Dashboards	GA4	Your own overview of key numbers on a single screen

For a business website owner the takeaway is simple. For the first time, free Google tools answer the question "do people come to us from ChatGPT?" without paying an analyst for manual filtering. You only need to know where to look and how to read the numbers.

GA4 AI traffic step by step: where to find it

You will find traffic from AI assistants in the Traffic acquisition report as a separate AI Assistant row, nothing needs to be switched on.

The steps are the same for every website with GA4:

1. Open the report: in the left menu choose Reports, then Acquisition and Traffic acquisition.
2. Keep the default dimension: the table is grouped by Session default channel group. Among channels such as Organic Search, Direct or Referral you will also see an AI Assistant row if anyone came to you from an AI assistant in the selected period.
3. Find out which assistant: switch the dimension to Session source / medium. Visits from AI have the medium "ai-assistant" and the source shows the specific assistant. Their campaign is labelled "(ai-assistant)".
4. Compare quality: in the same row look at average engagement time and key events, for example a submitted form. Compare them with the Organic Search row.
5. See which pages people land on: add a secondary dimension with the landing page. That shows which of your articles or services AI assistants recommend.

According to the GA4 default channel definitions, the AI Assistant channel covers visits from sources such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot or Grok. Google assigns them automatically depending on whether the referring page (referrer) is on its list of AI assistants. Google does not publish the full list.

Source Group: ChatGPT and Perplexity under one name

The second useful aid is the Source Group dimension from 11 June 2026. It merges scattered names of the same source into a single value. Google introduced it mainly with social networks as the example, but according to the release notes it also contains built-in groups for ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Perplexity. Google states explicitly that Source Group is populated retroactively, so you can use it for older periods too. For the AI Assistant channel the release note does not mention retroactive data, so check the months before May 2026 through Source Group or the source dimension instead.

What GA4 leaves out of AI traffic

The AI Assistant channel is not all AI traffic: clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode, visits without a referrer and people who did not consent to cookies are missing from it.

This is the most common mistake when reading these numbers. A small number in the AI Assistant row does not mean AI ignores you. Here is where each type of visit ends up:

Where the visitor came from	Where you see them in GA4	Where to look further
A link in an answer from ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and similar	AI Assistant	Session source / medium, Source Group
A link in AI Overviews or AI Mode in Google	Organic Search, together with regular results	Search Console, generative AI performance report (impressions only)
A visit where the app or browser did not pass the source	Usually Direct	Cannot be separated reliably
A visitor who declined analytics cookies	Missing from standard reports or only modelled, depending on the Consent Mode setup	Cookie banner and Consent Mode settings

AI Overviews and AI Mode. The GA4 channel definitions state explicitly that the AI Assistant channel excludes AI Overviews and AI Mode, while Organic Search includes them. So in GA4 you cannot tell a click from an AI answer in Google results apart from a click on a classic blue link.

Missing source. The AI Assistant channel is assigned based on the referrer. If the app or browser does not pass it, GA4 has nothing to classify the visit by, and under the channel rules it ends up as Direct. How many such visits there are cannot be read from the data, so treat the AI Assistant number as a lower bound, not an exact total.

Cookie consent. According to Google's Consent Mode documentation, in basic mode no data at all goes to Google when a visitor declines. In advanced mode only cookieless measurements are sent without consent, and Google models from them. How to set this up is explained in our article on the cookie banner and Consent Mode v2.

Search Console: impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode

How often your site appears in Google's AI answers is shown in Search Console, in a separate generative AI performance report.

Google introduced the report on 3 June 2026 on the Search Central blog, at first for a subset of sites. Since 31 August 2026, according to a note added to the same post, it has been available to all websites worldwide. It shows:

• Impressions: how often links to your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
• Pages: which specific URLs appeared in AI features.
• Countries and devices: where people searched from and on what.
• Trend over time: by hour, day, week or month.

For Discover, Search Console has a separate report of the same kind. What matters is what the report does not contain: Google lists impressions in it, not clicks. According to Google's documentation on AI features, clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the regular Performance report, under the Web search type, together with all other clicks from Google.

In practice this means a division of labour. Search Console answers whether and where Google shows you in AI answers. GA4 answers who actually arrived from AI assistants and what they did on the site. If AI impressions grow while Organic Search visits stand still, it may be a sign that people get their answer directly in the results. That is when it pays to adjust your pages so that people have a reason to click through.

How to set up a simple monthly overview

One dashboard in GA4, one check in Search Console and clean data without foreign domains are enough.

Since 9 September 2026 GA4 has had Dashboards, custom overviews with charts that you assemble with drag and drop. For a typical business we recommend one screen with three charts: visits by channel including the AI Assistant row, landing pages from the AI Assistant channel and key events by channel. The monthly routine then takes a few minutes:

1. In the GA4 dashboard, compare AI Assistant with the previous month and with Organic Search.
2. Write down the three pages that get the most visitors from AI.
3. In Search Console, open the generative AI performance report and check which pages have the most impressions.
4. Compare both lists: a page with many impressions and few clicks is a candidate for improvement.
5. Check whether domains that are not yours have appeared among the sources.

Clean data: the hostname filter

Spam traffic and foreign domains can completely drown out small AI numbers. Since 11 June 2026 GA4 has offered a data filter that excludes events from selected hostnames. Since 21 September 2026 it also works the other way round, as an allowlist of approved domains (Include): GA4 blocks everything from other domains. Note two things from the documentation. An Include filter automatically blocks events with an empty hostname as well, but it does not apply to events sent via the Measurement Protocol. And the effect of a data filter is permanent: GA4 never processes the excluded data and you cannot get it back later. Before switching it on, list all your domains including subdomains and language versions.

In practice: what to track on a business website

On a smaller business website, track the trend and specific pages, not absolute numbers.

On the Slovak business websites we work with, our experience is that AI traffic is still fairly small. That is exactly why it is easy to misread. A few rules that have worked for us:

• Look month over month, not day over day. With small numbers a daily chart is just noise.
• Where people land matters more than how many there are. If AI sends people to your pricing or a service page, that is a different signal than visits to an old article.
• Measure key events. Without tracking form submissions or clicks on your phone number you cannot tell whether AI visits bring enquiries. If the site has no basic measurement at all, start there.
• Keep the pages AI recommends up to date. Outdated prices or services you no longer offer keep spreading through AI answers.
• Do not forget speed. Someone arriving from an AI answer already knows what they want and will not wait for a slow page. How to check it is described in our article how to check your website speed.

How we handle it at Denva: in an SEO engagement we first agree on access to Search Console and GA4. If the site does not have them yet, we create and set them up for you. We set up measurement so that after every change you can see what actually moved, and the access and all the data stay yours.

When you can do it yourself and when to bring us in

You can do it yourself if:

• you have both GA4 and Search Console and both show data,
• checking the AI Assistant row and the AI features report once a month is enough for you,
• the site runs on a single domain without language versions or subdomains.

It is worth bringing us in if:

• you have no key events set up and do not know whether the site brings enquiries,
• you want to switch on the hostname filter without risking a permanent loss of data,
• AI impressions are growing but clicks are not, and you need to find out which pages to change.

Conclusion

Today you can see GA4 AI traffic without manual filters: the AI Assistant channel shows people from ChatGPT, Gemini and other assistants, and Source Group merges sources such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode, however, stay in Organic Search, and their impressions are in Search Console. Treat the AI Assistant number as a lower bound, follow the trend and above all which pages people from AI land on and whether they turn into enquiries. If you want your measurement checked or set up from scratch, get in touch to book a consultation.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions.

Where do I find ChatGPT traffic in GA4?

In Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, in the AI Assistant row. You see the specific assistant after switching the dimension to Session source / medium; visits from AI have the medium ai-assistant.

Does GA4 count AI Overviews and AI Mode in the AI Assistant channel?

No. According to the GA4 channel definitions, clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are part of Organic Search. Their impressions are shown in the Search Console generative AI performance report.

Since when does GA4 separate traffic from AI assistants?

Google added the AI Assistant channel on 13 May 2026. The Source Group dimension with the ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Perplexity groups arrived on 11 June 2026 and, according to Google, is also populated retroactively.

Why is AI traffic in GA4 lower than you expected?

Because the AI Assistant channel only captures visits with a recognised referrer. Visits without a source usually end up in Direct, clicks from Google AI answers in Organic Search, and people without cookie consent are missing from standard reports.

Does Search Console show clicks from AI Overviews?

Not separately. The generative AI performance report shows impressions, pages, countries, devices and the trend over time. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the regular Performance report under the Web search type.