AI visits are growing, but GA4 only catches part of them. Semrush data reported by Search Engine Land shows U.S. traffic to ChatGPT.com up 48% year on year in July 2026, while Bing fell by about half. Google added an AI Assistant channel to GA4 in May 2026, yet visits that arrive without a referrer still land in Direct.
This guide covers what the data says, what GA4 now does and misses, how to build a custom channel, how to estimate the hidden share, and how to fill the gaps with prompt testing and surveys.
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Quick Answers – Jump to Section
- What does the latest traffic data say about AI habits?
- Why does AI traffic appear as Direct in GA4?
- What did GA4 change in May 2026?
- How do you build a custom AI channel group in GA4?
- How do you estimate the AI visits hiding in Direct?
- What about Google’s own AI features?
- What else can fill the gaps in GA4?
- What should Web3 and FinTech teams do differently?
- Final Thoughts
- Frequently asked questions
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What does the latest traffic data say about AI habits?
Google and YouTube still dominate U.S. web traffic, but ChatGPT is the biggest riser among the largest sites. Search Engine Land compared Semrush Traffic Analytics data for July 2026 with July 2025 in its report on the winners and losers in U.S. website traffic. Google rose 10.72% to 25.3 billion monthly visits, and YouTube rose 36.6% to 10.3 billion.
ChatGPT.com rose 48.38% to 1.09 billion visits and ranked ninth, ahead of DuckDuckGo and Bing. Bing’s traffic fell by about 50%.
Keep the scale in view. ChatGPT’s 1.09 billion visits are about 4% of Google’s 25.3 billion, by our own calculation from those figures. The habit is growing quickly, but it has not replaced search. This is why our Growth Engine covers both search and AI engine discovery, as well as ads for instant lead generation.
Obviously, treat the numbers as estimates. Semrush Traffic Analytics is a modelled dataset, and Search Engine Land discloses that it is owned by Semrush.
The figures cover the U.S. only, and they count visits to ChatGPT itself, not the clicks it sends to other sites. Your own analytics have to answer that second question, which is where the next problem starts.
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Why does AI traffic appear as Direct in GA4?
AI visits appear as Direct when they arrive without a usable referrer, because GA4 files sessions with no referral information under Direct. Several things strip the referrer.
AI apps can open links in an in-app browser. Links get copied and pasted. Privacy settings and link attributes can block referrer headers.
Tagging adds a second wrinkle. ChatGPT has appended utm_source=chatgpt.com to many of the links it shows, but not to every link, and many other assistants add no tag at all. A click that carries only a source and no medium, and no referrer, can fall into Unassigned instead of Referral.
The result is a floor, not a total. GA4 shows the AI visits it can identify. The rest sits in Direct or Unassigned, mixed in with bookmarks, typed addresses and email apps.
That is why one report cannot settle the question of how much traffic AI sends you. You need the GA4 channels, a way to estimate the hidden share, and sources outside GA4. The sections below cover each one.
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What did GA4 change in May 2026?
Google added an AI Assistant channel to GA4’s default channel group on 13 May 2026. Referrers that GA4 recognises as AI assistants now get the medium ai-assistant and their own row in the Traffic acquisition report. Google’s What’s new in Google Analytics notes record the change, and no setup is needed.
Four limits are worth knowing:
- It depends on the referrer. No referrer means no channel, so those visits still land in Direct.
- The list is not public. Google names assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, Copilot and Grok as examples, but some others may still appear under Referral. Check your own report.
- Google’s own AI is excluded. AI Overviews and AI Mode count as Organic Search in GA4, not as AI Assistant.
- It may not be retroactive. Analysts report that data from before 13 May stays under its old channel, so compare carefully across that date.
So the new channel is the right first place to look, and it is not the whole answer. A custom channel group still earns its place.
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How do you build a custom AI channel group in GA4?
Build a custom channel group that matches AI hostnames on the source, and place it above Referral. This catches assistants GA4 does not recognise, and visits that carry a source tag but no medium. Follow these steps:
- Open GA4, then Admin, then Data display, then Channel groups.
- Create a new channel group by copying the default group.
- Add a channel called “AI assistants (all)” and set the condition to Source matches regex.
- Paste a regex of the AI hostnames you see in your own Session source report.
- Move the new channel above Referral, because GA4 assigns traffic to the first channel whose rule it matches.
- Check the result in Traffic acquisition and compare it with the default AI Assistant row.
A starting regex looks like this:
^(chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|perplexity\.ai|claude\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com)$Do not paste it blindly. Look at your Session source report first, note the AI hostnames that appear in your data, and add them. Hostnames change, so review the list every quarter.
Because the rule matches on source, it also catches visits tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com that would otherwise sit in Unassigned. Custom channel groups are applied when you run a report, so they also show earlier data.
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How do you estimate the AI visits hiding in Direct?
Treat the hidden share as a range, with the identified visits as the floor. The floor is the AI Assistant channel plus your custom group. Above that floor, look for patterns in Direct that point to AI. None of these proves anything alone, so use them together:
- Landing page. Direct visits that land on a deep article or a comparison page, rather than the homepage, are unusual for bookmarks and typed addresses.
- Device. AI mobile apps often send no referrer, so a high mobile share in a Direct landing-page group is a clue.
- Timing. Look for a rise in Direct sessions to a page soon after it starts being cited in your prompt tests.
- New users. A strong share of new users on a Direct landing page suggests a first visit from a recommendation.
Report these visits separately, labelled “possible AI in Direct”, with the method written beside the number. Do not add them to your AI total. A range with an honest method is more useful than a single figure you cannot defend.
You can also run a simple before and after. When you fix a wrong AI answer or earn a new citation, watch the Direct sessions for the cited page over the following weeks.
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What about Google’s own AI features?
GA4 will not show Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode as a separate channel, because they count as Organic Search. For those, use Search Console. Google launched the Search Generative AI performance reports on 3 June 2026, and they have been live for all properties worldwide since 31 August 2026.
The reports show impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates. They do not show clicks. That means they tell you where Google’s AI features surfaced your pages, not how many people visited from them. Use the pages view to see which URLs are being surfaced, then compare them with your GA4 landing pages.
Read the two together. If a page appears often in the Search Console AI report and its Organic Search sessions in GA4 do not rise, people may be reading the answer and not clicking. Our post on zero-click search and Web3 covers what to do in that case.
Save a monthly export of both reports. Dashboards change, and you will want the original figures later.
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What else can fill the gaps in GA4?
Three sources outside GA4 fill the gaps: AI visibility tracking, audience signals and customer surveys.
AI visibility tracking. Write 30 to 50 questions your buyers really ask, freeze the list, and run it on each AI engine every month. Score each run for whether the engine names your brand, cites your site and describes you accurately. This tells you what GA4 cannot, which is if you appear in answers that never produce a click. Our method is in how to measure GEO success, and AI brand visibility tracking for Web3 teams covers tracking over time.
Audience signals. Watch branded search in Search Console. When buyers meet you in an AI answer, they often look you up by name afterwards. Read that trend next to your citation rate.
Customer surveys. Add an open text field to your contact and demo forms: “How did you hear about us?” Buyers write “ChatGPT recommended you” in their own words. Add a hidden form field that stores the first-touch source and UTM values, so the answer reaches your CRM before it is overwritten.
None of these is perfect. Together they give you a more complete picture than GA4 alone.
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What should Web3 and FinTech teams do differently?
Web3 and FinTech teams should connect AI visits to wallet and account actions, and check what AI says about licences and jurisdictions. A visit is only useful if it leads somewhere.
For Web3 products, set wallet connect and first on-chain action as conversion events in GA4. Then segment the AI Assistant channel and your custom group by those events. That shows whether AI-referred visitors connect wallets and transact, or only read.
For regulated FinTech and crypto brands, accuracy carries as much weight as volume. An engine that states the wrong licence status, jurisdiction or product details can send the wrong buyers, or none. Log each error with the exact wrong claim and fix the source page. If you do not appear at all, read why a crypto project is not showing up in AI search results.
Keep privacy in mind. Be careful about joining wallet addresses to analytics profiles in the EU, and take legal advice on what you store. For the buyer side of this change, see how ChatGPT search habits compare with Google habits for Web3 teams. Once visibility is measured, our complete guide to answer engine optimisation covers how to earn more citations.
Final Thoughts
Tracking AI traffic in GA4 is a crucial first step, but analytics only show you the visitors who click through to your site. They miss the thousands of buyers who get their answers directly inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini without ever hitting your landing page.
If you aren’t being cited in those AI answers, your analytics will stay quiet no matter how much you tweak your GA4 channels.
Do you know how visible you are on ChatGPT and the other AI engines?
We’re currently testing our new AI Visibility Auditor to track brand citations across FOUR AI search engines. We ask 6 questions to each, to find out whether your business is named, who gets named instead, and on which sites it found that information.
If you’d like to see where AI engines place your brand today, and the steps to become the brand they recommend first, come and join the beta group. Message me on LinkedIn to secure your spot before we launch.
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Frequently asked questions
Why does ChatGPT traffic show as Direct in GA4?
Because some visits arrive without a referrer, and GA4 files sessions with no referral information under Direct. AI apps, pasted links and privacy settings can all remove the referrer.
Does GA4 have an AI traffic channel?
Yes. Google added an AI Assistant channel to the default channel group on 13 May 2026. It only catches visits whose referrer it recognises, and it excludes Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Do I still need a custom channel group?
Yes, as a backup. It catches assistants that GA4’s list may miss, and visits tagged with a source but no medium. Place it above Referral.
How do I measure AI Overviews traffic?
GA4 counts it as Organic Search. Use the Search Generative AI report in Search Console for impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates. It does not show clicks.
Is ChatGPT replacing Google?
Not on this data. In July 2026, Semrush estimated ChatGPT.com at 1.09 billion U.S. visits against Google’s 25.3 billion, so ChatGPT’s volume was about 4% of Google’s, even though it grew 48% in a year.
How do I know how many AI visitors I really get?
You do not get an exact number. Use the identified AI channels as your floor, review Direct landing pages for signs of AI, and add survey answers and prompt testing to complete the picture.
If you want this run on your own site, I’ll do a free scan. Send your URL to rob@influxjuice.com.
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