# 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.

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## 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.

### 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.

### 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**.

### 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.

### 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**.

### 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.

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## 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](/content/docs/tracking/cloudflare/index.html) as a complementary signal.

Last updated on April 23, 2026.