AI has changed the way people buy forever. More than 38% of shoppers are already using AI tools to research and purchase but those numbers are only growing. So what does this mean for businesses?
As a brand you need to stay ahead of the curve. You need to optimise for this new channel, to make the AI search experience seamless and invest in AI and tools. But right now, above all, you need an effective way to track and report on AI traffic and customers. You need to know when you’re doing the right thing and when you’re not. Lucky for you, Google has just the tool.
GA4 launches AI Assistant Channel
Whether your business is new to the world of AI tools or you’re tired of second guessing the effect AI search engines are having on your brand, then we have good news. GA4 has introduced a new AI Assistant default channel group, making it easier for businesses to identify and measure traffic sent from AI-powered platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Those who use GA4 as digital marketing tool will be familiar with its usual default channel groupings. These channels categorise website traffic into groups such as Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Email and Referral, allowing you to see how an audience is arriving at your site. Until now, visits from AI were often bundled into the ‘Referral’ channel, muddying the waters and confusing reporting. Now it’s broken down into AI Assistant medium, channel, campaign and source, detailing a user’s exact journey from AI tool to your site.
These simple additions remove any ambiguity. When a user reaches your site clicking a link from a recognised AI tool, such as ChatGPT, GA4 will categorise that visit under the dedicated AI Assistant channel. The result; a much clearer picture of how AI-driven traffic contributes to website visits, engagement and, most importantly, conversions.
What can we measure with this new AI digital marketing tool?
The real benefit of this new feature isn’t just traffic allocation, but for the first time we have tangible information on how AI is contributing to a website’s performance. Finally, brands can stop wondering about the hypotheticals of AI assistants and can truly measure the impact using the same metrics relied on for other marketing channels.
Within GA4, you’ll be able to analyse how visitors arriving from AI assistants behave once they land on your website, including;
- Sessions: see exactly how many visits are being driven by recognised AI assistants.
- Engagement rate: understand whether AI-referred visitors are actively interacting with your content.
- Average engagement time: measure how long AI users spend exploring your website.
- Key events: track important actions such as downloads, video views, form interactions or newsletter sign-ups.
- Lead generation: monitor how many enquiries or contact form submissions are coming from AI-driven traffic.
- Ecommerce revenue: for online retailers, identify how much revenue AI referrals are generating.
- Conversion rate: compare how effectively AI traffic converts against your other marketing channels.
Perhaps most importantly, you can easily compare AI Assistant traffic directly with your existing channels, including Organic Search, Paid Search, Social, Email and Referral. This makes it far easier to answer questions such as:
- Are AI visitors more engaged than organic search visitors?
- Do they convert at a higher or lower rate?
- Is AI becoming a meaningful source of leads or revenue?
- Which of my landing pages does AI favour and why?
What it doesn’t measure
While the new AI Assistant channel is a welcome addition to GA4 and provides much greater visibility into AI analytics, it is by no means complete.
- AI Overviews: these are still counted as Organic Search. If someone clicks through to your website via link on Google AI Overview as a part of Google Search, that visit will continue to appear under your Organic Search channel rather than AI Assistant.
- Google AI Mode: although Google is expanding its AI-powered search experience, traffic from AI Mode isn’t separated into the new AI Assistant channel for now.
- Not all AI assistants are recognised: at this stage the only AI tools named by GA4 are ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. We do expect this list to expand as the feature develops. Until then, AI assistant traffic that arrives without a referrer header still lands in Direct.
- Overall AI visibility: the AI Assistant channel only reports users who click through to your website. Your AI appearance numbers therefore may be slightly higher than you expect.
It’s not perfect but it’s a huge piece of the puzzle and helps us get a much better understanding of the landscape of AI Assisted search. As chatbot technology continues to develop, we can expect Google’s reporting capabilities to evolve alongside it.
Looking for deeper AI insights?
GA4’s new AI Assistant channel is an excellent starting point, but if you want to go beyond website traffic, you need specialist tools that provide far more detailed AI visibility reporting.
Take SEMrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit, for example. It’s the latest offering in AI digital tools which can help you understand AI visibility, prompts and searches you’re appearing for and those you could target, prompt tracking what competitors are doing and so much more. Specialist platforms just like this provide invaluable insights but they aren’t free. All come with a cost that you have to weigh against how much of an opportunity AI is to your business. As an agency, we invest in these toolkits, the latest tech and training to offer in-depth AI analytics as an optional add-on. For us, keeping ahead of the curve isn’t an option when AI is spearheading an ecommerce revolution.
For businesses where AI visibility is a strategic priority, combining data from specialist AI reporting platforms with your GA4 insights and website analytics builds a much more complete picture of your AI performance. The result is a deeper understanding of how your brand is being discovered, where opportunities exist, and how AI is influencing your SEO, content strategy and digital marketing.
What should businesses do now?
AI is already dominating ecommerce and now there are tools to help you harness that power, so what’s your next step?
- Make tracking a priority: you might only see a handful of sessions attributed to AI right now, and that’s perfectly normal. The important thing is that you start tracking and reporting on this just as you do with any other vital data.
- Go GEO: AI is here to stay so make Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) part of your routine SEO maintenance. You can find more practical tips on how to grow your AI visibility organically in our blog ChatGPT Ads Have Arrived: A New Era Of Paid Search.
- Embrace AI ads: AI is also about to change the paid ad space. If you’re not already looking ahead to this then you may already be behind.
Whether you’re generating leads or driving ecommerce sales, the businesses that start measuring today will be best placed to capitalise on its growth in the future.
The bigger picture: AI is becoming a marketing channel
Whether you’re already fully embracing AI or still approaching it with caution, one thing is clear; AI is changing how people discover brands online. Millions of users are now turning to platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to research products, compare services and find recommendations before they ever visit a search engine.
Google’s introduction of the AI Assistant channel in GA4 reflects that shift. For the first time, businesses can clearly identify traffic arriving from AI assistants, measure how those visitors engage with their website and understand whether AI is contributing to enquiries, sales and other valuable conversions.
While the numbers may be relatively small today, they won’t stay that way forever. By beginning to track your successes in AI search, you’ll be in a much stronger position to measure the success of your GEO efforts and make informed decisions about your SEO and content strategy.
The businesses that start measuring and understanding this traffic today will be the ones best equipped to capitalise on its growth tomorrow. If you’d like to discuss GEO, AI ads, tracking your AI success in these tools and so much more, get in touch today to discuss our AI Analysis packages.
