How do I see visitors from ChatGPT in Google Analytics?

In Google Analytics 4, open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Change the table's first column to Session source. Add a filter on Session source that matches the regex chatgpt.com|chat.openai.com|perplexity.ai|gemini.google.com|claude.ai|copilot.microsoft.com. Each row is then one AI site and the Sessions column is the visits it sent.

Can Google Analytics show visits from Google AI Overviews?

No. A click on a link inside an AI Overview reaches your site as an ordinary Google search click, source google and medium organic. Google Analytics has no way to tell the two apart.

Does indextr connect to Google Analytics?

No. indextr measures what AI engines say about a business; Google Analytics measures who visited afterwards. The analytics data would not change a recommendation, the largest AI source is invisible in it, and connecting would need the customer's Google login. This page shows how to read it yourself instead.

Guide

Seeing Visitors from AI in Google Analytics

indextr tells you whether AI engines name your business. Your own Google Analytics can tell you whether that turned into visits. It takes three clicks, needs no setup, and this page also says what it cannot show you.

The short version

When someone clicks a link, their browser usually tells the destination which page the click came from. Analytics tools call that the referrer. A visitor who clicked your name inside ChatGPT arrives carrying chatgpt.com as the referrer, and Google Analytics records it as the visit’s source. Perplexity, Gemini and Claude work the same way. So a single filter on the source shows every visit that announced it came from an AI engine.

Expect small numbers. A local business named in AI answers is sent a handful of visits a month by them, and some months none. One row with three sessions is a real result, not a broken report.

The three clicks

This is Google Analytics 4, the current version. You need to be signed in to the property for your website.

Open the traffic report

In the left menu choose Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Set the date range in the top right to the last 90 days, so that small numbers have room to appear.

Change the first column to Session source

The table’s first column is a dropdown, usually reading “Session default channel group”. Click it and pick Session source. Each row is now the site a visit came from.

Filter to the AI engines

Click Add filter above the table. Dimension: Session source. Match type: matches regex. Value: paste the pattern below. Apply.

Pattern to paste

What remains is one row per AI site and a Sessions column, which is the number of visits it sent in that period. An empty table means Google Analytics recorded no visit that announced itself as coming from those sites. That is not the same as no visits, for the two reasons below.

Two things it cannot show

Google AI Overviews. A click on a link inside an AI Overview reaches your site as an ordinary Google search click: source google, medium organic. Google Analytics has no way to tell the two apart, and neither does anyone else. Google AI carries the second-largest weight in your Visibility Score, and none of its visits will ever appear in this filter.

Visits that arrive unannounced. Some links opened from an AI app carry no referrer at all, for example when the app opens your site in its own built-in browser. Google Analytics files those under Direct, as if the visitor had typed your address. So the number this filter shows is a floor. The real count is at least that, and there is no way to learn how much more.

Google's own AI Assistant channel

Google has added an AI Assistantchannel to the default channel group, so on some properties you will see that row in the Traffic acquisition report without changing anything. Google’s definition names ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok as examples and does not name Perplexity or Claude, so the filter above still catches more. If both are present, trust the filter.

Reading it alongside indextr

indextr’s By Engine table says how often each engine named you. This report says how often a visitor came from each one. They will not match, and should not: most people who read an AI answer never click anything. What is worth noticing is direction over months. If ChatGPT names you more often than it did, and visits from chatgpt.com appear where before there were none, the two are telling the same story.

If you do not have Google Analytics, or do not know how to sign in, whoever built your website usually does. This page is written so it can be sent to them as it is.

Why indextr does not connect to Google Analytics

We considered it and decided not to, and the roadmap keeps a record of what we chose not to build. Analytics measures who visited; indextr measures what the engines say, and changing that means changing your pages, your listings and what the crawlers can read. None of that is in analytics data, so a connection would not improve a single recommendation. It would need your Google login, it would show a number that leaves out Google AI entirely, and for most local businesses that number would be close to zero and read as bad news. The three clicks above give you the same read for nothing.

Back to Help & FAQ