GDS

ChatGPT (and other AI chatbots) are a fast-growing source of referral traffic to websites and apps. But…

How do you find ChatGPT referral traffic in GA4?

I’m going to show you a few ways you can do it.

ChatGPT Traffic in Report Dashboard
ChatGPT Traffic in Explore Dashboard

SIGN UP: Digital Strategy Newsletter

Should I Track AI Traffic in GA4?

Understanding how users reach your website and app is a fundamental to understanding audience behavior.

You want to know not only how many referrals you’re getting from ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots but also what users do once they get there.

The more you learn about a particular referral source, the better you’ll understand how much time to invest in it.

I’m going to show you two places in GA4 where you can analyze ChatGPT traffic: Reports and Explorations.

Within those, the possibilities for how you monitor that traffic are practically endless.

Tracking ChatGPT Traffic in GA4 Using Reports

Anything you create in Reports and add to your library is instantly visible to the rest of your team. This is a great place to set up and save a custom ChatGPT referral report that can be easily accessed and analyzed.

1. Under Reports, open the Life cycle collection

2. Open the Acquisition topic folder. Unless you changed or removed it, your dashboard should include a “Traffic acquisition” detail report by default. Click that.

3. Make sure your primary dimension is set to “Session source / medium.”

4. In the search bar, type “chatgpt.com / referral” and hit return/enter.

That’s it! You can now see how much traffic you have received from ChatGPT within the selected timeframe.

If you have gotten this far and nothing shows up when you add that filter, you didn’t receive any traffic from ChatGPT within the selected timeframe.

Bonus (optional) step: ChatGPT landing page report.

5. Click the + next to the primary dimension selector. This will allow you to select a secondary dimension in the right-adjacent column.

6. Search for and select “Landing page + query string” as your secondary dimension. This will show you the exact page the user was sent to from ChatGPT aka where they “landed” on your site.

But what if you don’t want to access this report in the future without going through all these steps? Great question.

SIGN UP: Digital Strategy Newsletter

Saving Your ChatGPT Referral Report

Once you complete the steps above, don’t close your browser tab! Otherwise, you’ll have to start from scratch to access this data again. Instead, follow these steps.

1. Click the pencil icon near the top right of your window.

2. Click the “Add filter” option on the right sidebar.

3. Select “Session source / medium” as your dimension. Set it to “Exactly matches”, type “chatgpt.com / referral” and select it from the dropdown menu. Click the blue Apply button. (Again, if chatgpt.com / referral doesn’t show up, it means you haven’t received traffic from ChatGPT in the selected date range.)

4. Click the blue Save button and then select “Save as a new report.” (This is very important so that you don’t override your main traffic acquisition report.)

5. Name your report. (I recommend “ChatGPT referrals” or “ChatGPT landing pages”, depending on which report you’re creating.) Click “Save.”

But wait – you’re not done yet. If you don’t do this next step, the report won’t be visible in your left sidebar.

6. Click on Library at the bottom of the Reports sidebar. Then click on the three vertical dots at the top-right of the Life cycle topics box and click Edit.

7. Scroll through the Detail reports options on the right until you see the report you just created. Click and drag it into the Acquisition topic folder.

The same order you arrange your reports here is the same order in which they’ll appear in Reports. You can have one Overview report per topic (in this case, Life cycle is the topic) but multiple Detail reports.

(You can drag it under whichever topic within whichever collection you choose, but this is where I recommend.)

8. Once you have it where you want it, click the blue Save button then select Save changes to current collection.

9. Click the blue Back link at the top-left part of the page, then click Reports in the left sidebar tab. Now refresh the page. (Sometimes refreshing may not be necessary, but since it only takes a few seconds, so go ahead and do it.)

10. You should now see “ChatGPT landing pages” (or whatever you named your report) within the Acquisition topic folder.

Go ahead and click that report link and admire your work!

It will now be here for you and your colleagues to view every time you return to GA4, no report editing necessary.

SIGN UP: Digital Strategy Newsletter

Tracking ChatGPT Traffic in GA4 Using Explorations

Now that you have a report to track ChatGPT traffic in your Reports dashboard, it’s time to set up an exploration.

Why? Because explorations give you more flexibility in the way you analyze your data while also giving you the option to keep your report private.

Unlike the Report option above, you don’t have to go through any extra steps to access this report again later. It will save automatically and be available in your Explore tab the next time you log in.

It won’t, however, be visible to other team members unless you share it with them. (And even then, they don’t be able to edit it unless they duplicate it.)

Here are the steps to get started with a foundational report, which you can then customize.

1. In the Explore tab, click on Blank report, the first option within the templates.

2. Name your exploration and the tab within it. These can be whatever you want, and you can change them later. I recommend keeping the overall exploration name more general and then getting specific on the tabs.

3. Click the + sign next to DIMENSIONS within the variables tab, search for the dimensions you want to add, check off the corresponding boxes and click the blue Apply button.

(I recommend starting with the Session source / medium and Landing page + query string dimensions, respectively.)

4. Now do the same thing with Metrics. I recommend starting with Sessions, Views and Average engagement time per session, but you can choose whichever metrics you like.

(You can always change your dimensions and metrics later, so don’t be afraid to keep it simple starting out.)

5. Double-click the Landing page + query string dimension, then all three of the metrics. The order in which you double-click the metrics is the order in which they’ll appear in the report from left to right.

Alternatively, you can click and drag dimensions and metrics to the Settings column. You can also rearrange them once they’re in the settings column, regardless of the method you used (double-click or drag) to get them over.

6. You’ll notice that we didn’t add Session source / medium to our report. That was on purpose.

We do, however, need to have it in the Variables column to use it as a filter, which is what we’re going to do now.

Scroll to the bottom of the Settings column until you see Filters. Then click “Drop or select dimension or metric.”

7. Set the conditions to “exactly matches” then start typing “chatgpt” and select the “chatgpt.com / referral” option.

This option should appear/autocomplete automatically as you start typing*. Click the blue Apply text.

*If it doesn’t, it means you probably don’t have traffic from ChatGPT within the time range you chose, if it all.

8. In the Settings column, max out the number of rows displayed to 500. (I recommend doing this for all explorations to minimize pagination clicks.)

9. You’re all done! To see your work more easily, click the X at the top of the Variables and Settings columns so the table takes up the full screen. (You can always pop these back up by clicking them on the bottom of the page if you want to edit your exploration.)

Whenever you want to access this exploration again, go to the Explore tab and it should appear on your list of reports.

Remember, unless you share it, it will be private to you (indicated by the single, and not double, silhouette on the left side of the row).

What Are People Asking on ChatGPT To Reach My Website?

There are tools that try to help show which queries people are using on ChatGPT to reach your website. Since none of the LLMs are releasing data, however, these tools are essentially making guesses.

I do, however, have a theory about how you can find out: Bing Webmaster Tools.

Microsoft, which runs Bing, is a big investor in OpenAI, which runs ChatGPT.

ChatGPT even powers many of Bing’s search queries. (In particular, it’s chatbot.)

So if you can see in Bing Webmaster Tools which terms people use to reach your site, it may be a hint into the kinds of terms/queries they use to find you on ChatGPT.

It’s definitely an inexact science, but should get you on the right track.

SIGN UP: Digital Strategy Newsletter