How do I measure AI traffic to my website? GA4, Plausible and Search Console

GA4 has had a built-in AI Assistant channel since May 2026, and Plausible has AI Assistants. Here’s where to find the number, what it doesn’t include, and why UTM tags aren’t enough.

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How do I measure AI traffic to my website? Short answer: Open Google Analytics 4 and look at the "AI Assistant" channel, which Google added to the default channels on 13 May 2026. If you use Plausible, the channel is called "AI Assistants". Clicks from Google’s own AI answers (AI Overviews and AI Mode) aren’t there. You’ll find those in Search Console, and Copilot’s citations in Bing Webmaster Tools.

You don’t need to buy anything to see whether ChatGPT is sending you customers. The number is already in the analytics tool you use today. The hard part isn’t finding it. The hard part is knowing what isn’t in it, so you don’t think AI doesn’t care about you when it’s actually being counted somewhere else.

This guide walks through the four places AI traffic shows up: Google Analytics 4, Plausible, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Finally, we show what our own nightly measurement of AI answers says about the tags AI services add to their links.

Where do I see AI traffic in Google Analytics 4?

In the standard traffic channels report. On 13 May 2026 Google added a new channel, "AI Assistant", to GA4’s Default channel group. According to Google’s own description, a visit lands there when the referral comes from a service on Google’s list of AI assistants, e.g. ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, DeepSeek and Grok.

1. Go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition.
2. Make sure the table shows Session default channel group.
3. Find the row AI Assistant. Click it, and switch the dimension to Session source to see which service the visits came from.

Two things to know before you read the number. First, the channel does not include Google’s own AI answers. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode still show as organic search. Second, the channel is new, so if you compare with the period before May 2026, the same visits sit there under "Referral".

How do I create my own AI channel in GA4?

With a Custom channel group. It’s worth doing if you want to control the list yourself, or if you want to see AI visits before May 2026 in one place. Google’s guide to Custom channel groups even uses AI assistants as an example.

1. Go to Admin → Data settings → Channel groups, and copy the Default group.
2. Add a new channel, e.g. "AI", with the condition Session source matches regex:
   chatgpt|openai|perplexity|gemini|copilot|claude
3. Move the new channel above "Referral" in the order. GA4 uses the first matching rule, so if it sits below, AI visits will be counted as ordinary referrals.

According to the same guide, a custom channel group works retroactively in reports, but not in Audiences. You can therefore see your AI visits for the past months straight away, but you can’t build an ad audience from the history.

How do I measure AI traffic in Plausible?

Plausible has a built-in channel called "AI Assistants". In Plausible’s documentation it appears under the Channels tab in the sources overview, and it aggregates visits from known AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. You don’t need to set anything up. Click the channel to see the individual source.

Plausible is cookieless, so you get the number without a consent banner. It also means visits from people who declined cookies are included in Plausible, while they’re missing from a GA4 setup with consent. Two tools can therefore show two different numbers for the same month without either being wrong.

What about Google AI Overviews and AI Mode?

They’re in Google Search Console, but not on their own. Google writes that traffic from AI features in Search is part of overall search traffic and is counted under the search type "Web". A click from an AI Overview and a click from a normal blue link therefore look the same in your performance report.

Since 3 June 2026 there has, however, been a separate report on generative AI in Search Console, rolled out to all sites on 31 August 2026. It shows only impressions. There are no clicks, no click-through rate and no queries, and it doesn’t separate AI Overviews from AI Mode. Use it to see which pages Google shows in its AI answers. It can’t answer how many people click through.

How do I see whether Copilot cites me?

In Bing Webmaster Tools. On 10 February 2026 Microsoft launched the "AI Performance" report as a public preview. It shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries, how many of your pages are cited, and a sample of the questions the answers were based on.

It’s the only one of the four reports that shows citations instead of visits. That matters because many people read the AI answer without clicking. A site can be cited often and still get few visits, so citations are what you should follow.

Which source shows what?

Tool	Shows · does not show
Google Analytics 4	Visits from ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, etc. in the AI Assistant channel (from 13 May 2026). Not: Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Plausible	Visits from AI tools in the AI Assistants channel, without cookies. Not: Which questions triggered the visit.
Google Search Console	Clicks from AI answers in Search (mixed in under Web) and impressions in the AI report. Not: Clicks from AI answers on their own.
Bing Webmaster Tools	Citations in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. Not: Clicks.

Can you trust the UTM tag in AI links?

Only partly, and that’s why you should measure by channel and not by a tag. OpenAI writes that ChatGPT automatically adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to links from its search results. But not all AI services do this, and the tag isn’t the same everywhere.

We can see it in our own data. Geoa asks purchase questions to AI engines every night and stores the links the answers refer to. From 8 August to 15 October 2026 we collected 288 ChatGPT answers with links, fetched via OpenAI’s API. 861 of their 1,127 links (76%) carried the tag utm_source=openai, i.e. a different tag than the one the ChatGPT app uses. In the 50 Gemini answers with links from the same period, none of the 250 links had a tag.

A filter that only looks for chatgpt.com will therefore miss part of the traffic, and Gemini visits can only be recognised by the referrer. That’s why the regex above also includes openai. Some visits arrive with no referrer at all, e.g. when someone copies a link out of a chat. Google mentions copied links and stripped referrers as reasons for traffic that shows as "Direct". No tool can attribute those visits to AI with certainty.

Which number should I track?

Not just the number of visits from AI. Track three things together:

• Visits from AI per month in GA4 or Plausible. If the number is rising, you’re being used as a source more often.
• Enquiries or sales from those visits. Set up a conversion on your contact form or checkout so you can see whether AI visits turn into customers.
• Whether AI mentions you when customers ask. That isn’t in any analytics tool. A visit requires the AI to have mentioned you first, and most people who read the answer never click.

The last point is where most people lack a number. It’s also where a GEO tool like Geoa helps. GEOA AI SEO-medarbejder™ asks the AI engines what your customers ask, and shows whether you’re mentioned. If you’ve connected Google Analytics or Plausible, you’ll see the visits from ChatGPT and the others alongside, and how many of them turn into enquiries or sales. Read more about checking whether ChatGPT mentions your business, and about writing content AI will cite.

Frequently asked questions

How do I measure AI traffic to my website?
Open Google Analytics 4 under Acquisition → Traffic acquisition and look at the "AI Assistant" channel, which Google has had in the default channels since 13 May 2026. In Plausible, the channel is called "AI Assistants". Clicks from Google’s own AI answers are in Search Console under Web, and Copilot’s citations are in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Does GA4 count clicks from Google AI Overviews as AI traffic?
No. The AI Assistant channel excludes Google’s own AI features, so clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode still show as organic search. In Search Console they’re counted under the search type Web alongside normal clicks.

Why do GA4 and Plausible show different numbers for AI visits?
Because they measure differently. Plausible is cookieless and also counts visits from people who declined cookies. A GA4 setup with consent only counts those who said yes. The lists of AI services aren’t exactly the same either.

Can I see which question made ChatGPT send a visitor?
No, ChatGPT doesn’t send that. You can see which page the visit landed on and infer the topic from that. If you want to know which questions you’re mentioned on, you need to ask the AI engines themselves or use a tool that does it continuously.