surendranb AI Referral Analysis
Measure traffic arriving from AI tools — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and others — and understand how it behaves compared to other channels.
When to use
- You want to quantify how much of your traffic comes from AI assistants
- You're tracking whether AI-driven discovery is growing over time
- You want to compare AI referral quality (engagement, conversion) to SEO or direct
Known AI referral sources
These domains appear as sessionSource in GA4 when users click links from AI tools:
| Tool | Source domains |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | chatgpt.com, chat.openai.com |
| Claude | claude.ai |
| Perplexity | perplexity.ai |
| Gemini | gemini.google.com |
| Copilot | copilot.microsoft.com, bing.com (when AI-driven) |
| You.com | you.com |
| Grok | grok.x.ai, x.com |
Step 1 — Volume and trend
dimensions: ["date", "sessionSource"]
metrics: ["sessions", "newUsers", "userEngagementDuration", "screenPageViews"]
dimension_filter: sessionSource contains "chatgpt.com" OR "perplexity.ai" OR
"claude.ai" OR "gemini.google.com" OR "copilot.microsoft.com"
date_range: last 30–90 days
Use date as a dimension to see the growth trend.
Step 2 — Quality comparison
Compare AI referral quality against your other top channels:
dimensions: ["sessionDefaultChannelGroup", "sessionSource"]
metrics: ["sessions", "userEngagementDuration", "screenPageViewsPerSession",
"keyEvents", "bounceRate"]
date_range: last 30 days
Then filter the results to AI sources and compare engagement metrics
against Organic Search and Direct.
Step 3 — Which pages AI drives traffic to
dimensions: ["sessionSource", "landingPage"]
metrics: ["sessions", "userEngagementDuration", "keyEvents"]
dimension_filter: sessionSource contains "chatgpt.com" OR "perplexity.ai" OR "claude.ai"
date_range: last 30 days
order_by: sessions DESC
This shows which content AI tools are citing and sending users to.
What to report
- AI referral as % of total sessions (and % of total new users)
- Month-over-month growth rate for AI referral traffic
- Engagement quality: AI vs Organic Search (userEngagementDuration, keyEvents)
- Top landing pages receiving AI referral traffic
- Which AI tool sends the most traffic