Blog · 25 September 2026 · By HeardOf

How to see ChatGPT and Perplexity visits in your analytics

How do I find ChatGPT traffic in Google Analytics?

Open the Default Channel Group reports in Google Analytics 4 and look for the AI Assistant channel. Google's release notes list it under 13 May 2026, historical, and say a visit is given the medium "ai-assistant", the channel "AI Assistant" and the campaign "(ai-assistant)" "when the referrer matches a recognized AI Assistant". That is where ChatGPT traffic in Google Analytics lands by default, provided the visit arrives with a referrer Google recognises.

Google's Default channel group page, which prints no publication date as served or rendered, describes the channel as covering "sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot, or Grok". Its rule says the medium is set "if the referrer matches a list of AI Assistants", and the page does not print that list or link to it. The same page counts Google's own AI Overviews and AI Mode under Organic Search, so a click from an AI Overview is not in the AI Assistant channel.

A second field followed on 11 June 2026, historical: Source Group, which the release notes say "Includes built-in grouping for emerging traffic sources like ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Perplexity." Neither Google page says what the channel does with a visit that carries a UTM tag; the string "utm" does not occur in the text of either page, as served or as rendered on 25 September 2026.

Does ChatGPT tag the links it sends?

Yes, according to OpenAI. Its Publishers and Developers FAQ says "ChatGPT automatically includes the UTM parameter utm_source=chatgpt.com in referral URLs, enabling clear tracking and analysis of inbound traffic from ChatGPT search results", and that publishers who allow OAI-SearchBot "can track referral traffic from ChatGPT using analytics platforms such as Google Analytics".

OpenAI's live page answered us with a Cloudflare challenge on 25 September 2026, which we did not pass. Both sentences are from the Internet Archive's capture of 13 September 2026, which prints "Updated: 16 days ago" and files the FAQ under OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas collection.

What tag did ChatGPT's API citations carry in our research run?

utm_source=openai, on 151 of its 173 citations, in our two-engine research run of 4 September 2026; Perplexity tagged none of its 391. Both figures are in who the AI actually cites, whose method section uses the tag as a counting rule: pages are counted with the query string dropped because of it. That run collected ChatGPT's answers through OpenAI's API and Perplexity's through Perplexity's API, from our own systems as read on 25 September 2026, and we re-counted the tags from the stored answers that day and got the same 151 and none.

The two routes differ. The URLs OpenAI's API returned in our run, from our own systems as read on 25 September 2026, carried openai; OpenAI's FAQ says ChatGPT's referral URLs carry chatgpt.com. We recorded cited URLs, not visits, so our run did not observe which value reaches a site when a person clicks a link in ChatGPT.

Does Perplexity add a UTM tag to its links?

Perplexity's pages we read do not say either way. We read Perplexity's crawler documentation, dated 29 January 2026 in its structured data only, historical; its API FAQ; its full API documentation as one file; its help article on robots.txt in the Internet Archive's capture of 1 April 2026, historical; and its publishers program post of 30 July 2024, historical, in a capture of 18 July 2026. None states whether a click from a Perplexity answer carries a UTM tag or passes a referrer. Perplexity's help centre and the live address of the publishers post answered us with a Cloudflare challenge, which we did not pass.

What we have instead is narrower. In our research run of 4 September 2026, collected through Perplexity's API (from our own systems, as read on 25 September 2026), none of its 391 cited URLs carried a tag. On Google's side, the Source Group note of 11 June 2026, historical, names Perplexity; the Default channel group page does not name it among its examples of AI Assistant sources, and that list of examples is not the rule's list, which the page does not print.

How do I set up my own AI channel in Google Analytics?

Create a custom channel group, because Google's channel page says default channel groups "can't be edited" and that you can create custom ones. The same page says a primary channel group can be edited and serves as the property's editable default. Seer Interactive's guide, dated 2 April 2024 and marked "Updated March 27, 2024", historical, gives the steps it used: Admin, then Data Settings, then Channel Groups; a group it called "Channels 2023"; a channel called "AI-Driven Search"; and a "matches regex" condition.

Its pattern matches any value containing gpt, neeva or writesonic, or containing both google and bard in either order. The guide's title names Perplexity and the pattern has no term for it, as served and as rendered on 25 September 2026; the page also says "As of 4/2/2024 these dashboards are not yet updated." Its dashboard, it says, "relies on referral traffic", and "Not all AI-search tools pass referrer information to your analytics tools". Before relying on any pattern, including one you write, compare it with the source values your own reports show.

What will your analytics not show?

It will not label as AI traffic a visit that arrives with no referrer and no tag, the gap behind Seer's warning that "Not all AI-search tools pass referrer information"; it will not put clicks from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode in the AI Assistant channel, because Google's channel page counts them as Organic Search; and it will not show any answer that named or cited you without anyone clicking.

The third is the one a citation count cannot close either. Our post who the AI actually cites answers "We do not know" to whether ChatGPT or Perplexity drives more traffic, because our run recorded which URLs each engine cited on 4 September 2026 and not whether anyone clicked them.

How was this read?

Every page was fetched on 25 September 2026 between 04:12 and 04:25 UTC with curl and a Chrome user-agent, read, and for Perplexity's full API documentation searched for "utm", "referr" and "referer". Google's release notes, Google's Default channel group page and Seer's guide were also rendered in headless Chrome at 04:22 UTC before any statement that they do not say something. Dates are the ones printed on each page, or the capture date for an Internet Archive copy; historical means more than 90 days before the reading day. One machine, one location.

What we could not do: OpenAI's FAQ, Perplexity's help centre and the live address of Perplexity's publishers program post answered with a Cloudflare challenge, which we did not pass, so the first and third were read from Internet Archive captures and the help centre was read only through one archived article. The Markdown versions of Perplexity's documentation pages open with a line telling readers to fetch its documentation index; it was read as data. Everything this post says about our own research run comes from our own stored answers and systems, read on 25 September 2026, and you cannot check it from here; everything else carries a link and the day it was read.

Do AI answers cite the pages that rank? Every published overlap figure, and what each counted