See visits from ChatGPT in your analytics, with cookie consent

Why it matters

When ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity answer a question, they often show links to the websites they used. Some people click. Those clicks are real visits to your website, and your analytics tool can count them, as long as two things are true: the visitor accepted analytics cookies, and the visit arrived with information about where it came from.

This guide shows you where these visits appear in Google Analytics 4, how to group them in one place, where to find them in Plausible or Matomo, and why your numbers will always be lower than the real total in Luxembourg, where analytics cookies need consent.

Illustration with a fictional business.

Reference

How a visit from ChatGPT is recognised

Your analytics tool cannot see the conversation. It only sees where the visitor came from when they landed on your page. There are two ways it finds out:

• A tag in the link. A link can carry a tag such as utm_source that names where the visit came from. Do not count on every assistant adding one: check your own referral list for what actually arrives. Your website must allow OAI-SearchBot to be shown in ChatGPT's search answers in the first place (see Guide 02).
• The referrer. Browsers usually tell the website which page the visitor came from. Google Analytics uses this to put visits from assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot or Grok in a channel called AI Assistant. Google does not publish the full list of addresses it recognises.

Some visits arrive with neither. Matomo says plainly that an AI assistant visit can only be attributed when referrer information is available. Those visits are counted, but not as AI visits. Treat your AI number as a minimum, not a total.

Before you measure

Cookie consent comes first

In Luxembourg, the data protection authority (CNPD) says a website may not place non-essential cookies before the visitor has actively given consent. Audience measurement cookies also need consent, unless strict conditions are all met: the statistics are anonymous, the data is not shared with third parties, and it does not allow tracking across websites. The CNPD also strongly recommends that refusing is as easy as accepting, and says a "cookie wall" (no access without accepting) does not give valid consent.

What this means for your numbers depends on how your banner and Google Analytics work together. Google calls this consent mode:

• Basic consent mode. Google tags are blocked until the visitor accepts. When a visitor declines, no data is collected, and Google Analytics does not fill the gap with estimates.
• Advanced consent mode. Tags load before the choice. When a visitor declines, they send "cookieless pings" without setting or reading Analytics cookies, and Google Analytics uses these pings to model the missing data.

On letzscale.com, Google Analytics only loads after a visitor accepts analytics cookies. Visitors who decline are not counted at all, including those who came from ChatGPT. Choosing between the two modes is a decision for you and your adviser; the CNPD guidelines and Google's consent mode pages are linked in the sources.

Before you start

Have these ready

• A login to Google Analytics 4 for your website. To create a channel group in step 4, you need the Editor role or higher on the property.
• If you use Plausible or Matomo instead, a login to that tool.
• Access to your cookie banner settings, or the contact of whoever set it up.

Steps

Find your AI visits in Google Analytics 4

1. Check your cookie banner works

   Open your website in a private browser window. The banner should appear before anything else, with "Accept" and "Refuse" equally easy to choose. If Google Analytics loads before you choose, or there is no way to refuse, fix this first with whoever manages your website. Read the CNPD guidelines in the sources if you are unsure what is required.

2. Open the Traffic acquisition report

   Sign in to Google Analytics. In the left menu, select Reports, then Acquisition → Traffic acquisition. Set the date range to the last 28 or 90 days, so there is enough data to see.

   The table is grouped by Session default channel group. Look for the row AI Assistant. If it is missing, Google Analytics recorded no recognised AI visits in that period, from visitors who accepted cookies.

3. See which assistant sent each visit

   Next to the dimension drop-down above the table, click the + icon to add a secondary dimension, and choose Session source / medium. Each row now shows the channel and the exact source, for example chatgpt.com.

   Also look at the Referral rows. If you see a source that clearly belongs to an AI assistant but sits under Referral, Google did not recognise it. Note it down for step 4.

4. Optional, for your developer or analytics admin: create a channel group for AI assistants

   The default AI Assistant channel cannot be edited. If you want to decide yourself which sources count, create a custom channel group. Google says custom channel groups can be applied to your reports retroactively, and a standard property can have two of them.

   1. Go to Admin, then under Data display, click Channel groups.
   2. Click Create new channel group. It starts as a copy of the default group. Give it a name, for example "Channels with AI".
   3. Click Add new channel, name it "AI assistants", click Add condition group, choose the dimension Source, the condition matches regex, and paste a pattern like the one below. Click Save channel.
   4. Click Reorder and drag "AI assistants" above "Referral". Google assigns each visit to the first channel it matches, so order matters. Click Apply, then Save group.

   Source matches regex · example, edit it to match your own referral listCopy

   .*(chatgpt|openai|perplexity|gemini|copilot|claude).*

   This pattern matches any source containing one of those words. Google's own example in its help page uses a broader pattern, and says to update it when the list of assistants you want to measure changes. Check the result against step 3: if something unrelated lands in the channel, remove that word from the pattern.

   To use the new group, open Traffic acquisition again, click the dimension drop-down and choose your channel group instead of the default one.

Other tools

Using Plausible or Matomo instead

A tool that uses no cookies can change what you must ask visitors. Whether you still need consent depends on how the tool is set up, so check it against the CNPD conditions above rather than relying on the vendor's marketing.

Check it worked

Confirm the numbers make sense

Pick a page that ChatGPT cites when you run the questions from Guide 01. In a private window, accept analytics cookies, click the link to your website from ChatGPT's answer, and check later that a visit from chatgpt.com appears in Traffic acquisition with the source / medium dimension.

Common mistakes

What usually goes wrong

• Loading analytics before consent to "get more data". The CNPD says non-essential cookies need active consent first. More data is not worth a complaint.
• Reading the AI number as all of your AI traffic. Visitors who refused cookies, and visits without a referrer, are not in it.
• Looking for Google AI Overviews in the AI Assistant row. They count as Organic Search in Google Analytics and as "Web" in Search Console.
• Putting the new channel below Referral. Visits are assigned to the first match, so AI visits end up under Referral.
• A pattern that is too broad. A short word can match unrelated sources. Always check which sources land in your new channel.
• Blocking OAI-SearchBot. If ChatGPT cannot show your site in search answers, there is nothing to click. Guide 02 checks this.