Google Analytics 4 launched its “AI Assistant” channel in Could. I’ve since collected information earlier than protecting the function right here.
AI Assistant measures and analyzes visitors from generative AI platforms. In its “Analytics Assist” portal, Google states the function contains visitors from “chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.”
Google doesn’t embody AI Overviews and AI Mode within the channel; as an alternative, it reviews these clicks as Natural Search.
To search out AI-assisted visitors, go to Studies > Acquisition > Site visitors acquisition, then have a look at the “AI Assistant” Session Channel Group dimension.
This report exhibits AI-driven visitors efficiency metrics, together with engagement, occasions per session, time per session, and extra.
The brand new “AI Assistant” function in Google Analytics measures and analyzes visitors from generative AI platforms. Click on picture to enlarge.
Touchdown Pages
The brand new AI Assistant channel additionally helps determine pages cited in AI solutions that drive clicks. Go to Studies > Engagement > Pages and screens on your website’s highest-traffic pages. Click on “Add filter” on the high of the graph.
Then select:
- “Session default channel group” because the Dimension.
- “Precisely matches” because the Match Kind.
- “AI Assistant” because the Worth.
Apply the filter to see pages with probably the most clicks from AI platforms.
AI vs. Different Site visitors
You may as well evaluate AI-assisted visitors to different sources. In the identical “Pages and screens” part, click on the “Add comparability” button on high of the graph. Choose “Create new” and select the identical steps because the filter above:
- “Session default channel group” because the Dimension.
- “Precisely matches” because the Match Kind.
- “AI Assistant” because the Worth.
The report will now evaluate your AI-assisted visitors with the location’s total visitors, web page by web page. To match with a particular supply (e.g., natural visitors), create a brand new comparability, following the steps above, and take away “All customers” from the comparability.
Now you possibly can evaluate engagement metrics for every web page throughout the 2 visitors sources: AI-assisted and natural.
In my assessments, visitors from the highest natural search and AI-assisted pages doesn’t overlap. It’s price checking the highest pages in Semrush or an analogous instrument to seek out the prompts driving these AI citations.
The brand new function additionally permits comparability of AI-assisted visitors efficiency with different sources. Click on picture to enlarge.
Utilizing Regex
The AI Assistant default channel makes filtering and evaluating simpler, but it surely doesn’t reveal which platforms it contains. Alternatively, you possibly can monitor particular person visitors sources, equivalent to ChatGPT, utilizing common expressions.
- Go to Studies > Acquisition > Site visitors acquisition.
- Click on “Add filter” above the chart.
- Choose “Session supply/medium” for the Dimension.
- Choose “matches regex” for Match Kind.
Then paste the next regex into “Worth”:
.*chatgpt.com.*|.*perplexity.*|.*edgepilot.*|.*copilot.microsoft.com.*|.*openai.com.*|.*gemini.google.com.*|.*claude.ai.*|.*grok.x.ai.*
Now you can see a useful breakdown of all of your AI visitors sources. Observe that the “Natural” and “(not set)” sources didn’t seem within the AI Assistant channel above, indicating minor information inconsistencies.
Common expressions might help reveal which genAI platforms generated visitors. Click on picture to enlarge.
