Artificial Intelligence platforms are becoming a valuable traffic and acquisition channel. To know whether your strategy is working or not, it is essential to track the volume of visits they generate, how much comes from each specific AI and, above all, how qualified that traffic really is
Do you know how many monthly visits your brand receives from Artificial Intelligence platforms?
Have you always wanted to know whether your SEO and GEO strategies are moving the traffic needle, but cannot pinpoint exactly how much traffic reaches your site from AI platforms?
Today I am going to help you find out whether your brand already shows up in ChatGPT and other AI tools and, more than that, whether it actually earns clicks from them.
In this post you will learn how to identify exactly how much AI traffic reaches your site, which AI platforms it comes from and whether that traffic generates revenue or not.
How to set up an AI report in GA4
The setup is far simpler than it looks.
And it will have a major impact on how you analyze your GEO results and your strategies to show up in AI platforms like ChatGPT.
Here is the step by step:
1\. Find the Channel Group customization
In the side panel of your Analytics, go to Admin:
Then select the "Channel Groups" option, located under "Data Display".
There you will see the option to create a New Channel Group:
The only group available will probably be the "Default channel grouping".
In that case, when you create a new group, it will pull those settings by default and you will simply add the AI one.
If your Analytics is already set up with a few channels beyond the default, you can click the three dots next to it and select "copy to create a new one".
That way, in addition to the AI view, you will keep every view your team already uses on a daily basis. This matters because it lets you run all your analyses in a single place.
2\. Create a new Channel Group with AI
Now you need to:
Name your new group something like "Channel Group with AI Traffic" (or whatever name you prefer, of course. As far as I am concerned, you can call it "AI Group", "AInalytics" or "Robert". But here is a simple suggestion).
Below you will see the list of default channels or the list already configured by your company that you copied.
Then you will click on "Add New Criteria".
That button should actually say "Add New Channel", since that is the tab you will land on.
There you will have the option to name this channel and define the conditions for it to display data.
Here I recommend calling it "AI Traffic" so it is clear to everyone who looks at the data.
Next, just like in the screenshot above, select "Source", since we want to analyze traffic that arrived via AI platforms.
In other words, traffic with an AI "Source".
Now you will need to choose a condition for that data to be displayed as "AI Traffic".
And here is the trick.
We want Analytics to count as AI traffic everything that originates from the ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini domains and so on.
To do that, you will select the condition "matches RegEx".
And paste the following: .\chatgpt\\.com.\|.\perplexity.\|.\gemini\\.google\\.com.\|.\copilot\\.microsoft\\.com.\|.\openai\\.com.\|.\claude\\.ai.\|.\writesonic\\.com.\|.\copy\\.ai.\|.\deepseek\\.com.\|.\huggingface\\.co.\|.\bard\\.google\\.com\
After that, just save the channel and the new group and voilà!
Now you can...
3\. View your traffic coming from AI platforms
Now let's move on to the part you are already familiar with.
Go to the "Reports" tab and, under "Acquisition", select "Traffic Acquisition"
At first you will see the default channels, so AI traffic will not be displayed.
But you can change the channel group being shown at the top of the data, as in the example:
To do that, select the name you gave your new Channel Group:
In my case, Channel Group + AI. Then you will be able to see traffic from every channel you normally track, now alongside traffic coming from Artificial Intelligence platforms.
This way, you can see your total traffic coming from AI.
Now let's analyze that traffic so you can track which AI platforms are sending the most visits to your site and where you still need to improve.
How to analyze traffic from different AI platforms
Let's dig deeper into the total number you already have.
For that, we will use another GA4 tab: "Explore".
1\. Create an "AI Traffic Source" Segment
In the Explore tab, we will create a "Blank" exploration.
You will see the following screen:
First, let's name this exploration.
I recommend something along the lines of "AI Traffic Source". Then we will configure each field for analysis.
Let's start with Segments.
You will notice there are already several default ones you can use for in-depth analysis of your data.
Our goal right now is to create a new Segment.
Since the idea here is to identify traffic source, we will create a "Session" Segment.
Now it is time to configure the type of session we want to explore. The setup will be very similar to what we did in "Reports".
The session configuration screen looks like this:
Here, we will Add New Condition. To do that, select:
- Include Sessions when
- Find "Traffic Source"
- Select "Session Source"
We will apply the same logic we used when creating the Channel in Reports: "Matches RegEx"
Let's paste that same string with the AI domains: .\chatgpt\\.com.\|.\perplexity.\|.\gemini\\.google\\.com.\|.\copilot\\.microsoft\\.com.\|.\openai\\.com.\|.\claude\\.ai.\|.\writesonic\\.com.\|.\copy\\.ai.\|.\deepseek\\.com.\|.\huggingface\\.co.\|.\bard\\.google\\.com\
It will look like this:
Then you can name this segment, something like "AI Traffic Source", and click Apply.
The segment will now be visible. It will be the foundation for pulling all the data.
Now let's set up our report.
2\. View the Source of your AI visits over time
Let's configure our report.
Although there are many fields, the setup is quite simple:
1\. Dimension: "Session Source"
2\. Metrics: "Sessions"
3\. Visualization: Select the line chart, as in the example above
4\. Breakdown: Session Source
5\. Values: Sessions
Your setup is ready. Now just choose the date range you want to view and the granularity.
6\. Set the analysis period you want
7\. Set the Granularity: you can view monthly, weekly or daily data.
These last two are the variables you will change constantly to evaluate different periods at different granularities.
That way you can track week over week and month over month growth, and also spot daily peaks.
The visualization looks like this:
Why this analysis matters so much
You have extremely valuable data available for free.
With it, you can identify which AI platforms your traffic comes from and the total volume of that traffic.
It is important to have conversion and event tracking set up in your Analytics so you can go deeper and see whether that traffic is qualified and whether it has been generating business.
You can also use tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush to dig into other data such as mentions, citations, share of voice, and to explore the sources AI platforms use when mentioning your brand, for example.
If you are or become a Netlinks client, you can also use our GEO Tool inside our App.
With it, we select specific, relevant prompts for your market and see the responses from the leading AI platforms, mapping how often your brand is cited and comparing your Share of Voice with your competitors.
Now you can identify the exact volume and source of your traffic coming from Artificial Intelligence platforms.
It is also possible that Analytics shows no data at all, meaning you are not receiving visits from AI platforms.
Or that the traffic is well below what you expected.
I would like to invite you to try our free GEO diagnosis to see how your brand has been showing up for the key prompts in your market.
And if you need it, count on Netlinks to build your Response Marketing strategy and make sure your brand will be the next answer in AI platforms, on Google and wherever your persona is asking.
If you are interested, talk to us here!
