ChatGPT tracking: how to track mentions, traffic and leads from ChatGPT

Short answer: in GA4, open Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition and look for the AI Assistant channel, or set the dimension to Session source and find chatgpt.com. That shows ChatGPT clicks. It misses people who read ChatGPT’s answer and then searched your name or phoned you, visits from the ChatGPT apps that arrive without a referrer, and what any of those people were worth.

Two kinds of ChatGPT tracking

Question you’re asking	What to track	Free way to check
Does ChatGPT recommend my business?	Mentions: whether you’re named, and which sites ChatGPT cites instead	Ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask, or use our free ChatGPT visibility checker (3 questions per check)
Is ChatGPT sending me visitors?	Traffic: visits with a chatgpt.com referrer or utm_source=chatgpt.com	GA4’s AI Assistant channel (steps below)
Is ChatGPT sending me customers?	Leads and revenue, including people who never clicked	Ask “How did you first hear about us?” and list ChatGPT as an option

Track ChatGPT mentions

1. Write ten questions a real customer would type, for example “best emergency plumber in Austin” or “is [your business] any good”.
2. Ask each one in ChatGPT with the same wording each month, in a fresh chat, and note whether you’re named and whether a page of yours is linked.
3. Keep the results in a spreadsheet so you can see the trend, not one lucky or unlucky answer.

Answers change from one run to the next, so one check proves little. Paid trackers repeat the same questions on a schedule; we compare them, prices included, in AI visibility tracking tools. Which AI Sent’s Starter plan runs a weekly ChatGPT check on your own customer questions.

Check ChatGPT traffic in two minutes

In GA4, open Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition, set the table to Session default channel group and find AI Assistant. Switch the dimension to Session source to see chatgpt.com on its own. The rest of this guide explains why that number is lower than what ChatGPT really sends you.

The three ways ChatGPT sends you a customer

What the person does	What your analytics records
Clicks a link in ChatGPT’s answer on the web	chatgpt.com as the referrer, often with utm_source=chatgpt.com added to the link (what that tag means). GA4 puts it in the AI Assistant channel.
Taps a link in the ChatGPT app on a phone	Often no referrer at all, because in-app browsers tend to drop it. If the UTM survives, you see chatgpt.com. If not, the visit lands in Direct.
Reads the answer, then Googles your name or calls you	Google organic, or nothing at all. ChatGPT gets no credit.

Only the first row is reliably visible. For local and service businesses, where people act on a recommendation by phoning, the other two rows are often the bigger share.

Method 1: see ChatGPT visits in GA4 (free)

Since May 2026, GA4’s default channel group has had an AI Assistant channel. It picks up visits from recognised AI assistants: Google’s documentation names ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot and Grok. It isn’t retroactive, so older ChatGPT visits stay under Referral.

1. Go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition. The table is grouped by Session primary channel group. Find AI Assistant.
2. To split it by assistant, change the dimension to Session source and search for chatgpt. You may see chatgpt.com and the older chat.openai.com.
3. For conversions, open Reports → Engagement → Key events and add Session source as a secondary dimension.

Full setup, including a custom channel that also catches Perplexity and Claude, is in ChatGPT traffic in GA4. The regex is ready to copy from our AI referral regex generator.

Where the GA4 method stops

• Sessions, not customers. GA4 can say ChatGPT sent 40 visits. It can’t say which three became paying customers or what they paid, unless you’ve wired every sale back into GA4.
• Clicks only. The people who searched your name or phoned after asking ChatGPT never show up as ChatGPT.
• Lost referrers look like Direct. App traffic without a referrer is mixed in with people who typed your address.
• Google’s AI looks like Google. AI Overviews and AI Mode clicks are recorded as ordinary search. GA4’s AI Assistant channel explicitly excludes them, and no tool can split them out reliably.

Method 2: follow ChatGPT visitors through to leads and revenue

Which AI Sent connects to your website (one click on WordPress and Wix, or a one-line snippet anywhere else) and remembers where each visitor first came from. When that visitor later fills in your form or buys, even days afterwards, the lead carries its source. Mark the job won, or let your CRM send the win back, and the revenue is counted against ChatGPT.

For customers analytics can’t see, it adds one optional question to your forms, “How did you first hear about us?”, and lets you log phone leads in a click. Every lead is labelled with how we know:

Label	Means
Confirmed	The same visitor arrived from ChatGPT (referrer or utm_source), then contacted you within 90 days.
Declared	No tracked visit, but the customer said they found you through ChatGPT when asked.
Assisted	Written evidence that ChatGPT shaped the choice while another channel completed it.

No evidence, no AI credit. Every figure is a minimum, and the report shows how often the source question was asked, so you know how complete the picture is. More on the labels: Confirmed vs Declared.

Is ChatGPT recommending you at all?

(A quick self-check: how to tell if ChatGPT is sending you customers.) Tracking tells you what ChatGPT sent. It’s also worth knowing what ChatGPT says. Ask it what your customers would ask (“best mover in Austin”, “accountant for a small business near me”) and note whether you’re named, who’s named instead, and which websites it cites. Which AI Sent runs these questions for you every week and shows the answers next to your leads. That’s the difference between AI visibility and AI attribution.

Other AI assistants

Each assistant behaves a little differently: Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude, Copilot and the rest. For how it all fits together, start with AI search attribution.

Platform-specific guides

Step-by-step instructions for your platform: ChatGPT traffic on Shopify, ChatGPT traffic on Wix, ChatGPT traffic on WordPress, ChatGPT traffic on Squarespace, ChatGPT traffic on Webflow, ChatGPT traffic with Google Tag Manager, ChatGPT traffic in GA4, ChatGPT leads in HubSpot. See all AI tracking guides.

All three layers in one guide (mentions, visits and leads): AI search tracking.