How AI traffic is detected
When someone clicks a link in an AI answer and lands on your site, GA4 records the referrer. Rankly matches that referrer against the known AI platforms and tags the session as AI traffic. It looks at the landing-page referrer GA4 captures (pageReferrer), so it catches AI visits even when they’d otherwise
fall into “referral” or “direct”.
Platforms Rankly recognizes
| Platform | Matched from |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | chatgpt.com, chat.openai.com, openai.com |
| Claude | claude.ai, anthropic |
| Gemini | gemini.google.com, bard, Google AI |
| Perplexity | perplexity.ai |
| Copilot | copilot.microsoft.com, Bing chat |
| Grok | grok, x.ai |
| Poe | poe.com |
| Character.ai | character.ai |
What you see
LLMs as a channel
Your platform split puts AI tools alongside organic, direct, social, paid,
email, and referral, so you can compare AI traffic to every other source.
Per-platform breakdown
Sessions and users for each AI tool individually, so you know whether ChatGPT
or Perplexity is sending more.
Trends over time
How your AI traffic is moving week over week, per platform.
Pages AI sends to
Which of your pages AI-referred visitors land on, so you can see what AI is
citing.
Why this matters
AI tools increasingly answer questions by citing sites and sending people to them. That traffic often hides inside “referral” or “direct” in a standard GA4 report. Pulling it out lets you:- See whether your content is being cited and clicked.
- Compare AI traffic against your other channels.
- Tie AI visits to conversions and revenue (see Metrics).