How to Track AI Website Traffic From ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Other AI Tools

I built a simple a Looker Studio dashboard to help you track how much referral traffic is being sent to your website through AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

To set it up, all you need is a Google Analytics 4 account (the dashboard automatically pulls in data from GA4.)

The whole process should take less than two minutes.

How to Set Up the AI Traffic Dashboard

Step 1: Use this link to access the dashboard

Step 2: Click the three dots located near your Google Account profile picture, then select “Make a copy” from the menu.

Step 3: In the pop-up window, replace the existing data source with your Google Analytics 4 data source.

Step 4: Confirm the update and click “Save” to open your personalized AI Traffic Dashboard in a new tab.

Step 5: Customize the metrics as you see fit by clicking on “Properties” then navigating to “Setup”, and then choosing your preffered metrics.

Note: The conversion scorecard may not work after copying. This is because it uses a custom filter I set up to track form fills on my website. To update this follow the instructions in Step 5 .

What’s Included in the AI Traffic Dashboard

Dynamic AI Dashboard

I’ve divided the Looker Studio report into two dashboards:

1. Dynamic Dashboard

This page includes a date control and provides a detailed breakdown of:

• How much traffic is being sent to your site by AI tools

• What specific tools are sending that traffic to your site

• What pages on your site are receiving the most traffic from these tools

2. Month-Over-Month Report

This page tracks how much traffic your site receives each month, automatically updating as new months progress. The default metrics included are:

• Sessions

• Engaged Sessions

• Engagement Rate

These metrics are completely customizable, so you can track others if needed.

Month-Over-Month Report

Monitor AI Referral Traffic Using GA4 Instead

If you’d prefer to track AI website traffic directly in Google Analytics 4, here’s how to set that up:

Option 1: Create a custom AI channel group

Screenshot: GA4

Step 1: Open Google Analytics 4.

Step 2: Navigate to Admin > Data Display > Channel Groups.

Step 3: Create a new custom Channel Group and enter a Group Name (e.g “Channel Group with AI”).

Step 4: Click '“Create New Channel” and enter a channel name (e.g. “AI-Driven Traffic”).

Step 5: Under “Channel Conditions,” select “source” and “matches regex” and paste the following formula:

.*chatgpt.com.*|.*perplexity.*|.*edgepilot.*|.*edgeservices.*|.*copilot.microsoft.com.*|.*openai.com.*|.*gemini.google.com.*|.*nimble.ai.*|.*iask.ai.*|.*claude.ai.*|.*aitastic.app.*|.*bnngpt.com.*|.*writesonic.com.*|.*copy.ai.*|.*chat-gpt.org.*

(thank you Larry Engel)

Step 6: Click “Save Channel Group”

Step 7: View your custom AI channel group in the Traffic Acquisition Report. Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition.

• Note: New channel groups begin collecting data upon creation, so results will take time to appear.

Step 8: At the top of the data table, change the dimension to your custom AI channel group to view AI-Driven Traffic as a line item.

Option 2: Use explorations to monitor AI traffic

Step 1: Open your GA4 account and select “Explore” from the main navigation on the left.

Step 2: On the Explore page, either select an existing report or create a new one by clicking the “Free Form” tile.

Step 3: Set your Dimensions to “Session source / medium” by clicking “+” and adding it to the list.

Step 4: Add your desired Metrics (e.g., Sessions, Active Users, Engagement Rate) to the report.

Step 5: Drag the “Session source / medium” tile to the Rows section on the right-hand side.

Step 6: Scroll down to the Filters section in the right-hand column.

Step 7: Click “+ Drop or Select Dimension or Metric” and choose “Session source / medium.”

Step 8: Under Conditions, select “Matches Regex” as the match type.

Step 9: In the “Enter Expression” box, paste the following regex: