Which website visits come from ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity? Finding AI referrals in GA4

Visits from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot show up in Google Analytics 4 under a session source such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai or gemini.google.com, and since May 2026 most of them also land in a built-in channel called AI Assistant. That is the part you can see. A good share of AI-driven visits arrive with no referrer at all and are filed as Direct, and visits from Google's own AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted as ordinary Organic Search. This post shows where to look, how to build a report you can trust, what to compare once you have it, and how to read the number honestly.

The short answer

Open Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, keep the primary dimension on Session default channel group and look for a row called AI Assistant. GA4 added it on 13 May 2026 as part of its default channel group.¹ The channel covers visitors who arrive "from sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot, or Grok", and it explicitly excludes Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, which stay in Organic Search.²

Then switch the dimension to Session source and search the table for chatgpt, perplexity, gemini, copilot and claude. That shows you which assistant sent each visit, including any that landed in Referral or Unassigned instead of the new channel.

Whatever number you find, read it as "at least". The visits you can see are the ones that kept their label on the way in.

How AI visits are labelled in GA4

GA4 decides where a session came from in a fixed order: tags in the link first, then the referrer the browser passed, and if there is neither, the visit is Direct. An AI assistant visit can end up in any of four places depending on which of those survived.

The tagged visit

ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to many of the links in its answers. That has been reported for citation links since at least mid 2025, when the tag also spread to the links under "more".³ The tag is useful because it survives even when the referrer does not. It is not guaranteed: in October 2026 links opened without it for a period and those visits were filed as direct, before the tag was reported back.⁴ If you see a sudden drop in ChatGPT visits with a matching rise in Direct, check that before blaming your content.

The referred visit

When someone clicks a link in an assistant running in a web browser, the browser normally passes the assistant's domain as the referrer, and GA4 records it as the session source. For the AI Assistant channel, GA4 sets the medium to ai-assistant and the campaign to (ai-assistant) when the referrer matches its list of assistants.² Assistants that are not on that list keep landing in Referral, which is why the source view still matters.

The visit you cannot see

Direct is defined as arriving "via a saved link or by entering your URL", and the rule is simply a source of (direct) with no medium.² In practice it is also where every visit lands when the referrer has gone missing. A page or app can tell the browser to send no referrer at all, and even the default browser policy sends only the domain across sites.⁵ Common ways AI visits lose their label:

• Tapping a link inside a mobile app, which may open it without passing a referrer
• Copying a business name or web address out of an answer and pasting it into a new tab
• Reading a recommendation, then searching for the business on Google (that visit counts as Organic Search)
• Privacy settings, extensions or a referrer policy that strip the referrer
• A link that opened without its UTM tag, as happened to ChatGPT links in October 2026

Build a report you can trust, step by step

The built-in channel is a good start, but you do not control its list, and it only began on 13 May 2026. A custom channel group fixes both: you decide which sources count, and it applies to your reports retroactively.⁶ You need Editor access to the property.

1. 1

   Open channel groups

   In GA4, go to Admin, then under Data display choose Channel groups and Create new channel group. This starts from a copy of the default group, so you keep every other channel as it was.⁶
2. 2

   Add a channel called AI assistants

   Add a new channel with one condition: Source matches regex the expression below. Add a second condition joined with OR: Medium exactly matches ai-assistant, so anything GA4 already recognises is caught too.
3. 3

   Move it to the top

   Traffic goes to the first channel it matches, in order.⁶ Drag your AI channel above Referral and above the built-in AI Assistant channel, or Referral will claim the visits first.
4. 4

   Save, then use it in reports

   Save the group. In Traffic acquisition, change the primary dimension to your new channel group. Past data is reclassified as well, so you can compare months straight away.

The regular expression

Regular expressions in Analytics are full match and case sensitive by default.⁷ The expression below is written in lower case and anchored at both ends, so it behaves the same either way. Paste it as one line:

^(chatgpt|chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|perplexity|(www\.)?perplexity\.ai|gemini|gemini\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com|claude\.ai|claude\.com|grok\.com|chat\.deepseek\.com|chat\.mistral\.ai)$

It is deliberately exact. Three choices are worth understanding before you edit it:

What to compare once you have the numbers

For most local businesses, AI visits will be small next to search and the profile. That is fine. The number on its own tells you little. What tells you something is how those visits behave next to the channels you already understand.

1. 1

   Engagement rate against Organic Search

   Someone who clicked through from an answer that named you has often already decided to look at you. If AI visitors engage at least as well as search visitors, the recommendation is doing its job.
2. 2

   Key events per visit

   Calls, form submissions and bookings, if you have marked them as key events. Compare the rate, not the count. A handful of AI visits that enquire at twice your usual rate is worth more attention than the total.
3. 3

   Which pages they land on

   These are the pages assistants are linking to. If it is mostly your home page, the assistant knows the business but no page answers the question. If it is a service page, that page is earning its place.
4. 4

   Which assistant sent them

   ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity choose businesses differently. A spike from one usually lines up with a change in whether that assistant mentions you.

Reading the number honestly

Three things move AI referral figures that have nothing to do with how often you are recommended. Keep them in mind before reporting a trend to a client or a board.

Add the consent gap on top. In the UK and Europe, visitors who decline analytics cookies may never reach GA4 at all, whichever channel they came from. So the AI figure, like every GA4 figure, undercounts. Report it as "at least", compare like with like over the same window, and treat a single week's swing as noise.

How SearchOps shows AI referrals per location

Doing this by hand works for one website. For an agency, or a business with several branches, it becomes one exploration per property, rebuilt every month. SearchOps connects to Google Analytics, links each property to the location it belongs to, and reads the AI visits for you.

The panel sits beside your LLM Visibility checks, on the location's Insights page under Over time. That is the point of putting them together: one side shows how often ChatGPT and Gemini mention the business across your checks, the other shows whether anyone arrived because they did. Matching is by exact domain, the same approach as the regex above, so a site with "gpt" in its name never inflates the count.

The same figures are available outside the app. The SearchOps MCP server includes a tool that returns AI assistant visits for one location, so you can ask your own assistant "how many visits did ChatGPT and Gemini send us this month?", and the REST API has a matching endpoint for your own reports.

Questions people ask

Why does GA4 show ChatGPT as a referral, not AI Assistant?

The AI Assistant channel depends on the referrer matching GA4's list, or the medium being ai-assistant.² A visit with a different medium, or from an assistant not on the list, falls through to Referral or Unassigned. A custom channel group with the regex above catches both.

Can I see which question someone asked ChatGPT before visiting?

No. The assistant passes, at most, its own domain and a source tag. The question stays with the assistant. The closest you can get is the landing page, plus your own record of which questions name your business.

Is Perplexity included in GA4's AI Assistant channel?

The channel documentation names ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok as examples rather than giving a full list.² Do not rely on any single assistant being covered: check the source view, or use your own channel group, which includes Perplexity explicitly.

Why did my AI traffic jump in May 2026?

Probably because GA4 started grouping it, not because more people arrived. Compare the source view, which was recorded the same way before and after, rather than the channel view.¹

Should I add UTM tags to links I give to AI assistants?

You do not control the links assistants show; they link to pages they find. Keep tags for links you place yourself, such as your Business Profile website link, and keep its source as google with medium organic so it stays in Organic Search.

Is the number big enough to matter?

For many local businesses it is still small next to search and the profile. It matters more than its size because those visitors often arrive having already been recommended. Judge it on enquiries per visit, not volume.

Wrapping up

Check the AI Assistant channel first, then the source view, then build a custom channel group if you want a row you control and history before May 2026. Compare engagement and key events, not totals, and always read the result as a floor. If you would rather see it per location beside how often each assistant mentions you, that is what the AI referrals panel in SearchOps is for.