How to Track AI Referral Traffic in Google Analytics

Google Analytics can help you identify which AI platforms are sending visitors to your website and review how those visitors interact with your content.

This guide explains how to find AI referral traffic and compare individual sources.

Step 1: Open Google Analytics

Open your Google Analytics property and go to the "Reports" section.

Depending on your Analytics configuration, AI traffic may already appear in the Reports Snapshot as its own channel labeled "AI Assistant."

This gives you a quick way to compare AI traffic with channels such as Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search and Referral.

Step 2: Open User Acquisition

From the Reports Snapshot, click "Display user acquisition."

This opens the User Acquisition report, where you can review how users reached your website.

Step 3: Select First user source

Scroll down to the table and open the dimension selector.

Select "First user source."

Google Analytics will now display the source that first brought each user to your website.

Step 4: Identify AI traffic sources

AI platforms can appear directly in the table as referral sources.

Examples include:

• chatgpt.com
• gemini.google.com
• copilot.microsoft.com
• perplexity.ai
• grok.com

The exact sources displayed depend on the traffic received by your website and your Google Analytics configuration.

Step 5: Compare performance

You can compare each AI source using available metrics such as:

• Total users
• New users
• Average engagement time
• Engaged sessions per active user
• Event count

These metrics help you understand which AI platforms are bringing visitors to your website and how those visitors interact with your content.

Step 6: Review traffic over time

The chart above the table lets you compare traffic sources over time.

You can use it to see when visits from individual AI platforms increase or decrease and compare them with your other acquisition channels.

Compare with PerkFuel

You can compare the referral activity shown in Google Analytics with the visits recorded inside your PerkFuel dashboard.

This gives you another way to review your campaign activity and the AI sources associated with your website traffic.

What happens next?

You now know how to find and review AI referral traffic inside Google Analytics.

From your PerkFuel dashboard, you can continue monitoring delivered visits, AI sources, target countries and active projects.