How to Report on Traffic from AI Tools in GA4

For example, when you ask ChatGPT “What are the best resources for learning BigQuery”, you’re provided with a few links — each of the grey “pills” are clickable.

1. In GA4, click on the Admin wheel at the bottom left and then click on Channel Groups under Data Display.
2. If you already have a new custom channel group, edit that group by clicking on it, or click Create New Channel Group to create a new group.

3. Click Add New Channel and name it whatever you’d like — for example, “AI Tools”.
4. Click + Add Condition Group, select Source, click + Add a Condition, select matches regex and enter this into the box, then click Apply:

chatgpt(.openai.com)?|claude.ai|quillbot.com|openai.com|blackbox.ai|perplexity(.ai)?|copy.ai|jasper.ai|copilot.microsoft.com|gemini.google.com

Note that there may be some AI tools that aren’t included here — if so, feel free to add them and if you aren’t sure how please get in touch so we can update this regex!

5. Click Save Channel at the top right.
6. (Optional) If this is a brand new channel group that you’ve created, make sure to enter a Group Name and optionally a Description.

Before we can save this channel group, we need to reorder our channels to ensure that this new AI Tools traffic doesn’t end up in other channels.

GA4 sorts traffic into channels from the top to the bottom of the list — by moving up our AI Tools channel we’ll be sure that our traffic ends up in that channel first.

6. Click Reorder (next to the Add New Channel button).
7. Scroll to the bottom, then use the “handles” to the left of the AI Tools channel to drag it above the Referral channel.

8. Click Apply, then click Save Group (at the top right).

Now you can head to any of your acquisition reports, click the drop down arrow to view the list of dimensions, and you’ll see your custom channel group showing up in the list of dimensions.

Change the dimension to your custom channel, and you should see if you already have website traffic from AI tools!

If you’d like to learn how to make a custom report in GA4 to report on just this traffic, check the video tutorial above.

And if you’re worried that there is a low volume of traffic in this channel right now, take this advice from Andy Crestodina:

“The numbers might be small today. But look at the trend line. This is just the beginning. AI will likely be an important source of traffic. It’s never too early to start tracking it!”