How To: Report GA4 AI Assistant Traffic Historically

As of May 2026, Google Analytics 4 includes a new default channel group called “AI Assistant”.

This means GA4 can now automatically identify some traffic from recognised AI tools, instead of placing everything into Referral or Direct.

At launch, Google referenced AI assistant sources such as:

• ChatGPT
• Gemini
• Perplexity
• Claude
• Copilot
• DeepSeek
• Grok

However, the full recognised referrer list is not publicly fixed. Traffic will only appear in the “AI Assistant” channel when GA4 can detect a recognised AI assistant referrer.

This guide focuses on AI Assistant traffic in GA4, not the separate Google Analytics AI features such as Analytics Advisor or Ask Advisor.

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What Is The AI Assistant Channel In GA4?

The “AI Assistant”channel in Google Analytics is a default channel group used to classify traffic from AI chatbot and assistant platforms.

When GA4 recognises the referrer as an AI assistant, it can automatically assign:

• Medium: ‘ai-assistant’
• Default channel group: ‘AI Assistant’
• Campaign: ‘(ai-assistant)’

This makes it easier to report on traffic from AI tools alongside channels such as Organic Search, Paid Search, Referral and Direct.

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How To Create An AI Assistant Traffic Report In GA4

The simplest way to report on AI Assistant traffic in GA4 is to use the standard acquisition reports.

Go to:

Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition

Then set your dimension to:

Session default channel group

From there, you can search or filter for:

AI Assistant

This will show sessions where GA4 has recognised the visit as coming from an AI assistant source.

You can also use the User acquisition report if you want to understand first-user acquisition, although for most reporting I would start with Traffic acquisition, as this is better suited to session-level traffic analysis.

This lets you create a basic GA4 AI Assistant report showing users, sessions, engagement, key events and conversions from AI assistant traffic.

This is how it currently looks in my GA4 account:

This native GA4 report is useful, but it only shows traffic that GA4 has classified as AI Assistant.

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Can GA4 Report Historical AI Assistant Traffic?

The issue is that GA4 only introduced this default AI Assistant channel in May 2026.

Before that, traffic from tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot was usually reported as Referral traffic. In some cases, it may also have appeared as Direct if the referrer was not passed.

So, if you only look at the new GA4 AI Assistant channel, you are only seeing part of the picture.

Personally, I think it be useful if you could report on AI assistant traffic historically as well as moving forward. Don’t you?

If so, you will be pleased to know you can do this in Looker Studio by creating a calculated field that combines:

• newer traffic already classified as ‘AI Assistant’
• older referral traffic from known AI assistant domains

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Create A Calculated Field For AI Assistant Traffic In Looker Studio

In Looker Studio, create a new calculated field called:

AI Assistant Traffic

Then use the following formula:

CASE

  WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(LOWER(Session default channel group), ".*ai assistant.*")

    OR REGEXP_MATCH(LOWER(Session source), ".*(chatgpt|openai|gemini|bard|perplexity|claude|anthropic|copilot|deepseek|grok).*")

  THEN "AI Assistant"

  ELSE "Other"

END

You can then use this field as a report filter as follows:

This lets you report on AI assistant traffic historically, including sessions that were previously grouped under Referral before GA4 introduced the AI Assistant channel.

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Group AI Assistant Sources Into Cleaner Names

The next step is to make the report easier to read.

For example, ChatGPT traffic may appear under different source values, and Copilot traffic may appear as copilot.com, copilot.microsoft.com or other Microsoft-related sources.

To tidy this up, create another calculated field called:

AI Assistant Source

Use the following formula:

CASE
  WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(LOWER(Session source), ".*(chatgpt|chat\\.openai|openai).*")
    THEN "ChatGPT"

  WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(LOWER(Session source), ".*(gemini|bard).*")
    THEN "Gemini"

  WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(LOWER(Session source), ".*perplexity.*")
    THEN "Perplexity"

  WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(LOWER(Session source), ".*(claude|anthropic).*")
    THEN "Claude"

  WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(LOWER(Session source), ".*(copilot|copilot\\.microsoft|edgeservices).*")
    THEN "Copilot"

  WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(LOWER(Session source), ".*deepseek.*")
    THEN "DeepSeek"

  WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(LOWER(Session source), ".*grok.*")
    THEN "Grok"

  ELSE "Other"
END

You can then use this field as the main dimension in your Looker Studio report.

For example:

• Dimension:
  AI Assistant Source
  
• Metrics:
  Sessions, Users, Engagement rate, Key events, Revenue
  
• Filter:
  AI Assistant Traffic equals AI Assistant

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What This Report Can Show You

Once set up, you can use the report to assess your AI Optimisation and Visibility Performance answering questions such as:

• which AI assistants are sending traffic
• which landing pages AI tools are linking to
• whether AI assistant traffic is increasing over time
• how AI assistant users behave compared with organic search users
• whether AI assistant traffic leads to enquiries, sales or other key events

This is especially useful because AI assistant traffic is often low in volume, but potentially high in intent.

Here is how it could look:

You can view my full bespoke Looker Report here.

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Important Limitations

This method will not recover every AI-influenced visit.

If a user clicks from an AI assistant and no referrer is passed, GA4 may still record the session as Direct. Likewise, visits from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode are not included in the AI Assistant channel because they happen within Google Search, so they are generally reported as Organic Search.

So this report should be treated as a useful indicator, not a complete measurement of every visit influenced by AI.

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What This Gives You

The new AI Assistant channel in GA4 is a useful step forward, but it does not automatically solve historical reporting.

By using calculated fields in Looker Studio, you can create a more complete view of AI assistant traffic by combining the new GA4 channel with older referral data from known AI assistant sources.

It is not perfect, but it gives you a much better way to track how tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot are contributing to website traffic over time.

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