How to track AI search traffic in Google Analytics 4, Search Console and Bing

To track AI search traffic, set up a custom “AI assistants” channel in Google Analytics 4 that groups visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude, then add Google Search Console’s Generative AI reports and Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance report to see how often you’re cited. Together, these show which AI tools send you visitors, which pages they cite, and whether those visitors become customers.

Out of the box, GA4 mixes AI visits in with ordinary referrals or loses them in “Direct”. It takes about ten minutes to fix.

What you can and can’t measure

What you want to know	Where to look
Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, Gemini	GA4, with a custom AI channel
Whether those visitors enquire or buy	GA4 key events, filtered to the AI channel
How often Google’s AI features show your pages	Search Console’s Generative AI performance reports
Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode	Search Console Performance report (combined with normal results, “Web” search type)
How often Copilot cites you, and for what	Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance
What ChatGPT says about you	Manual checks, monthly

Step 1: Create an AI channel in GA4

1. In GA4, go to Admin, then Data display, then Channel groups.
2. Find the Default Channel Group and choose Copy to create new. Name it something like “Channels with AI”.
3. Click Add new channel and call it AI assistants.
4. Set the condition to Source, matches regex, and paste in:

chatgpt|openai|perplexity|claude\.ai|gemini\.google|copilot|meta\.ai|grok|deepseek

1. Save the channel, then drag it above Referral in the list. GA4 checks channels from the top down, so if Referral comes first it will claim the AI visits.
2. Save the group. If you’d like it to be the default view in your reports, set it as your primary channel group.

Custom channel groups apply to your past data as well, so you can look back at earlier months straight away.

Review the regex every few months. New AI tools appear regularly, and some change their web addresses.

Step 2: Build a simple AI report

In Reports, open Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, and switch the dimension to your new channel group. To dig deeper:

• add Session source as a secondary dimension to see which AI tools send the most visits
• look at Landing page to see which pages AI tools link to
• compare key events, such as enquiries, calls or purchases, against your other channels

Many businesses find AI visitors are few in number but more likely to get in touch, because the AI has already explained what you do. Ahrefs reported that AI search visitors made up 0.5% of its traffic but 12.1% of its sign-ups.

Why some AI traffic shows as Direct

Not every AI visit carries a referrer. Links opened from mobile apps, copied and pasted, or opened in certain browsers can arrive with no information about where they came from, so GA4 files them under Direct. ChatGPT now adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to many of the links it shows, which helps, but not every tool does the same.

So treat your AI channel as a floor, not a ceiling. If Direct traffic to deep pages, such as a specific service page, rises at the same time as AI visits, some of it is probably from AI tools too.

Step 3: Use Search Console for Google’s AI features

Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode arrive in GA4 as google / organic, the same as normal results, so GA4 can’t tell them apart. Search Console can help:

• The Performance report includes AI feature clicks and impressions within the “Web” search type, combined with your normal results.
• The Generative AI performance reports, announced in June 2026, show how often your pages are served as sources in AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI-powered Discover, by page, country and device. At launch they showed impressions but not clicks or queries, and Google was rolling them out gradually, so you may not have them yet.

Watch for pages where impressions hold steady but clicks fall. That often means an AI answer is satisfying people before they reach your listing, and the page may need a stronger reason to click.

Step 4: Check Bing’s AI Performance report

Bing Webmaster Tools added AI Performance in public preview in February 2026. It shows where your content is cited in Microsoft Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries and some partner services, including:

• total citations over your chosen period
• average cited pages per day
• grounding queries: the phrases the AI used to find your content
• page-level citations, so you can see which pages are referenced most

It doesn’t show clicks, but the grounding queries are a useful window into how AI tools phrase the questions they research. If you haven’t set up Bing Webmaster Tools yet, it takes a few minutes, and you can import your site straight from Search Console.

Step 5: Check the answers yourself

No report tells you what ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude actually say about you. Once a month, ask each one the questions your customers ask, and keep a simple log:

• the question and the date
• whether you were mentioned or linked
• which competitors appeared
• any mistakes about your business

Answers vary between conversations, so look for patterns over several months rather than reacting to a single answer.

A monthly routine

1. Check AI visits and key events in GA4.
2. Note which landing pages AI tools are sending visitors to.
3. Review Search Console’s Generative AI report and Bing’s AI Performance report.
4. Run your question checks in the main AI assistants.
5. Pick one page to improve based on what you’ve learned.

Ready for some help?

If you’d like this set up properly, with a monthly report that shows your AI visibility in plain English, book a free chat. Reporting is built into our answer engine optimisation and GEO services.