How do I see which sales come from ChatGPT? Tracking AI traffic in GA4

Why this matters for a store or service business

Shoppers now ask ChatGPT what to buy and which shop to buy it from, as we explained in how shoppers use ChatGPT to find products. If you're working on being recommended, you need to know whether those recommendations turn into visits, orders and enquiries. Otherwise you can't tell if the work pays off, or which pages AI sends people to.

The good news: you don't need a new tool. GA4 already has most of what you need. The catch is knowing what it can and can't see.

Where each AI source shows up

Step 1: Make sure GA4 records your sales

Revenue only appears next to a channel if GA4 receives your orders. Google's ecommerce measurement guide uses a purchase event with a transaction_id, a value and a currency. Most store platforms send it through their Google or GA4 integration, but check: go to Reports > Monetization and confirm that last week's orders are there, with roughly the right revenue.

Not selling online? Mark the events that matter as key events instead: a contact form submission, a booking, a quote request or a click on your phone number.

Step 2: Find the AI Assistant row

1. Open Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
2. Pick a long date range, such as the last 90 days. AI numbers are small for most sites, and a week of data tells you little.
3. Keep the first column on Session primary channel group or Session default channel group, and find AI Assistant.
4. Read across: sessions, engaged sessions, key events, session key event rate and total revenue. Google's Traffic acquisition report guide explains each metric.

No AI Assistant row at all? Either no assistant sent you a recognisable click in that period, or the visits arrived without a referrer.

Step 3: See which assistants are sending people

Switch the first column to Session source / medium and search for chatgpt, perplexity, claude, gemini and copilot. This tells you which assistants send visits, and whether any of them sit under Referral instead of AI Assistant.

ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links in its answers, as OpenAI's publisher FAQ has said. It's worth knowing because it can break. In October 2026 the tag briefly disappeared and ChatGPT visits started showing up as Direct, until it returned a few days later, as Search Engine Roundtable reported. If ChatGPT traffic suddenly drops while Direct rises on the same pages, check this first.

Step 4: Add a custom channel for the assistants GA4 misses

If Perplexity or Claude visits sit in Referral, build your own channel. Google's custom channel groups guide includes an AI assistants example. The short version:

1. Go to Admin > Data display > Channel groups and click Create new channel group. GA4 starts you with a copy of the default group.
2. Click Add new channel and name it something clear, like AI assistants (custom), so nobody confuses it with the native AI Assistant row.
3. Add a condition on Source, choose matches regex, and paste the pattern below.
4. Click Reorder and drag your new channel above Referral. GA4 puts each visit in the first channel it matches, so a channel below Referral stays empty.
5. Save the group, then open Traffic acquisition and pick your new group in the first column.

The pattern to paste:

.*(chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|perplexity\.ai|claude\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com).*

Add any other assistant you spot in your source list. Google's own example regex is much broader, with catch-all patterns such as .*gpt.* and .*gemini.* that can match sources that have nothing to do with AI assistants. A short list of exact hostnames is easier to check.

Two things to know. The custom group applies retroactively, so you see past data straight away. And a standard property only gets 2 custom groups, so check with whoever else uses your GA4 before you create one.

Step 5: See which pages AI visitors land on

The channel total tells you if AI matters. The landing pages tell you what to do next.

Open Explore, start a Free form exploration, and add Landing page + query string as rows, with Sessions, Key events and Total revenue as values. Add a filter on your AI channel. You'll see which product pages, guides or service pages assistants send people to, and which of them sell.

Look for patterns. If AI visitors land on a buying guide and then leave, that page needs a clearer path to the product. If they land on a product page that's out of stock or missing key details, fix that page first.

Step 6: Measure what GA4 can't

GA4 only counts clicks that arrive with a recognisable source. Three other places fill the gaps:

• Google Search Console. Google says clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are part of your normal search traffic, under the Web search type. The Generative AI performance report, available to all sites since 31 August 2026, shows how often your pages appeared in those features. It counts impressions, not clicks.
• Bing Webmaster Tools. Its AI Performance report shows how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI answers, and which URLs.
• Your customers. Add a "How did you hear about us?" question to your checkout or contact form, with ChatGPT and "another AI assistant" as options. It's low-tech, and it catches people who read an AI answer and then typed your name into Google.

What you can't measure

• App visits without a referrer. Visits with no referrer and no campaign tag count as Direct. Your AI number is a floor, not a total.
• Answers that never get a click. Someone can read about your shop in ChatGPT and buy a week later through Google. GA4 gives that sale to Google.
• Google AI clicks on their own. GA4 can't separate AI Overviews and AI Mode clicks from other Organic Search clicks.

That's why the trend matters more than any single number. Check the same reports every month. If your AI channel, your Search Console AI impressions and your "heard about us from ChatGPT" answers all grow, the work is paying off. Our checklist for getting cited by ChatGPT covers what to work on.

Next step

Tracking tells you what AI sends you. To get more of it, AI assistants first need to be able to read your site. Run the free AI visibility check to see whether AI search bots can reach your pages and how your homepage scores across 6 AI-readiness areas. If you also want to let AI search bots in while keeping training bots out, our guide on allowing AI search bots but blocking AI training shows the exact robots.txt lines, and the €19 AI-Ready Kit delivers the files and fixes written for your site.