Which report answers which question
Use this if you have GA4 and Search Console open and want to know whether any AI assistant sent a visitor, without paying for a tracking tool. Four questions need three tools: GA4, Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. To check any row, open that screen in your own account and compare it with the help page linked under Sources, read October 6, 2026.
| Question | Where to look | What it can show | What it cannot show |
|---|---|---|---|
| Did ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot or Grok send visits? | GA4: Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Read the AI Assistant row in the default dimension, which Google's help page calls Session default channel grouping. | Sessions whose referrer GA4 matches to its list of AI assistants, tagged with the medium ai-assistant. | AI visits that GA4 counts as Direct instead: Ahrefs says this happens, particularly from mobile apps. Google gives those five assistants as examples, prints no full list and does not say whether Perplexity or Claude are on it. |
| Did Google's AI Overviews or AI Mode send visits? | GA4: the Organic Search row of the same report. Search Console: the Performance report for Search results, opened from the button on Google's help page. | Clicks to your site from Google results. Google says a click on a link inside an AI Overview or AI Mode counts as a click. | Which clicks came from an AI feature. Google's search type filters are web, image, video and news, with no AI filter. |
| Does Google show my pages in AI Overviews or AI Mode? | Search Console: the Generative AI performance report, opened from the button on Google's help page. Google says it reached all websites worldwide as of August 31, 2026. | Impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, device and date. | Clicks and queries: the help page lists neither. The report may not appear for a site with few AI impressions. |
| Does Microsoft Copilot or Bing's AI summaries cite my pages? | Bing Webmaster Tools: AI Performance, announced as a public preview on February 10, 2026. Microsoft's post gives no menu steps, so look for that name in your site's menu. | Total citations, average cited pages per day, a sample of grounding queries and citations per page. A June 16, 2026 preview adds Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare. | Visits: the post lists no visit or click metric. Rank or placement: Microsoft says its citation counts do not indicate either, and that Citation Share does not represent traffic share. |
The three tools count different things: GA4 counts visits, Search Console counts impressions and clicks, and Bing counts citations. Adding those numbers together has no meaning, so read each row alone.
Find AI visits in GA4, then the other two
- In GA4, open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. If the report is missing from the menu, Google says an Editor can add it back.
- Choose a date range of 90 days or more, because three months of counts are steadier than one.
- Write down the sessions for AI Assistant, Organic Search, Direct and the total, then divide AI Assistant by the total. Example: 5 AI Assistant sessions out of 1,200 is 0.4%.
- To see which assistant, use the Session source / medium dimension and search for each name in turn: chatgpt, gemini, copilot, perplexity, claude. Google's page shows a search box above the table, with "google / organic" as its example. Google prints no full list for the AI Assistant row, so a name found here may sit in another channel.
- Open the Generative AI performance report in Search Console and the AI Performance report in Bing, and write down impressions and citations. Repeat on the same day each month.
Google describes Search Console as a free service and Analytics as free of charge, so the GA4 and Search Console steps need no agency and no paid tool. GA4 can only report visits recorded after it was installed, so a property installed 30 days ago shows 30 days.
How many AI visits to expect
Both samples we read put AI assistants under 2% of traffic. Ahrefs counted 0.28% of total web traffic for all AI chatbots together across 74,752 sites in March 2026. LovedByAI reports 1.71% of all sessions for 166 small-business GA4 properties in May 2026, citing a Previsible study we could not find. Apply each share to your own sessions and do the sum: at 1,000 sessions a month, that is about 3 AI visits at 0.28% and about 17 at 1.71%. Ahrefs counts visitors, not GA4 sessions, so its sum is approximate.
Inside Google, Pew Research Center's March 2025 data for 900 US adults shows how seldom a summary link gets clicked: on results pages with an AI summary, 1% of visits clicked a link in the summary and 8% clicked an ordinary result link.
What no report shows
GA4 files visits with no clear referral source under Direct. Google lists typed URLs, offline documents, stripped links and ad blockers as causes. Ahrefs says some AI visits still arrive that way, particularly from mobile apps.
If a buyer asks an assistant, then searches your business name or phones you, the result shows up as branded search, Direct or a call. No report on this page measures that, so how many there are is unknown. The Generative AI report counts links to your site shown in Google's AI features, and its help page does not say whether a Google Business Profile shown in an AI answer counts, so that is unknown too. One free way to catch some: ask each new customer how they found you, and list ChatGPT, Gemini or another assistant as an answer.
If you want to know how many AI answers it takes before a count means anything, use the AI answer sample size calculator. If you want to know whether AI crawlers can reach your pages, use the AI crawler access checker. Our own results, including every run where we were not named, are on the AI visibility scoreboard.
Sources
| Source | What we used | Date | Who publishes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analytics Help, Default channel group | The AI Assistant channel (sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot or Grok, excluding Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode), its medium ai-assistant rule, Organic Search including AI Overviews and AI Mode, and the Direct rule. | The page prints no date. Read October 6, 2026. | Google, which sells Google Ads. The help page sells nothing. |
| Analytics Help, Traffic acquisition report | The click path Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, Session default channel grouping (the report's wording) as the default dimension, Session source / medium, the search box, and an Editor adding the report back. | The page prints no date. Read October 6, 2026. | Google. The help page sells nothing. |
| Analytics Help, Understand (direct) / (none) traffic | (direct) / (none) is traffic with no clear referral source, such as typed URLs, offline documents, stripped links and ad blockers. | The page prints no date. Read October 6, 2026. | Google. The help page sells nothing. |
| Search Console Help, About Search Console and Google Analytics overview | Search Console is called a free service, and Google Analytics is described as giving its tools free of charge. We did not find a price statement for Bing Webmaster Tools on the pages we read. | Neither page prints a date. Read October 6, 2026. | Google, which sells Google Ads. |
| Search Console Help, Generative AI performance report | Impressions for AI Overviews and AI Mode by pages, countries, dates and devices, rollout to all websites as of August 31, 2026, and the missing-report note. | The page prints no date. Read October 6, 2026. | Google. The help page sells nothing. |
| Google Search Central Blog, Search Generative AI performance reports | The announcement of June 3, 2026: the data stays in the overall performance report, and the new report shows impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates. | June 3, 2026. Read October 6, 2026. | Google, which sells Google Ads. |
| Search Console Help, how clicks and impressions are counted and Performance report (Search results) | A click on an external link in an AI Overview or AI Mode counts as a click, and the report's search type filters are web, image, video and news. | Neither page prints a date. Read October 6, 2026. | Google. The help pages sell nothing. |
| Google Search Central, AI features and your website | Sites in AI Overviews and AI Mode are reported in the Performance report within the Web search type. | Page last updated December 10, 2025. Read October 6, 2026. | Google, which sells Google Ads. |
| Bing Webmaster Blog, Introducing AI Performance and New AI Visibility Insights | The metrics (total citations, average cited pages, grounding queries sample, page-level citations), what they do not indicate, Citation Share not representing traffic share, and Bing Places for Business. | February 10, 2026 and June 16, 2026. Read October 6, 2026. | Microsoft, which sells Microsoft Advertising and runs Bing and Copilot. |
| Ahrefs, AI chatbot traffic and its tracker | All AI chatbots combined sent 3.5 million visitors in March 2026, which Ahrefs gives as 0.28% of total web traffic across 74,752 websites. The tracker says its cohort is sites that joined Ahrefs Web Analytics by June 2025. The article says some AI visits still appear as direct, particularly from mobile apps. | Published May 15, 2026, updated August 12, 2026. Read October 6, 2026. | Ahrefs, which sells SEO software and the Web Analytics tool that supplies the sample. |
| LovedByAI, The State of AI Traffic for Small Businesses 2026 | A chart of AI referral traffic as a share of all sessions: small business 1.71% in May 2026, from a Previsible study of 166 GA4 properties. We did not find the Previsible study itself, so this is a secondhand figure. | Published May 12, 2026, updated September 9, 2026. Read October 6, 2026. | LovedByAI, which sells software for AI search visibility. |
| Pew Research Center, Google users and AI summaries | 900 US adults, 68,879 Google searches, March 2025: 8% of visits with an AI summary clicked a result link, 1% clicked a link in the summary. | Published July 22, 2025. Read October 6, 2026. | Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan fact tank and a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. The page sells nothing. |
Questions people ask
Is zero AI visits a problem?
Not by itself. At the Ahrefs share of 0.28%, a site with 300 sessions in a month expects about 1 AI visit, so a zero month tells you little. A site with 3,000 sessions in 90 days expects about 8, so a zero there is worth checking: confirm the date range, then search Session source / medium for chatgpt.
Why is the Generative AI report missing in my Search Console?
Google says this usually means the site has not had enough impressions in generative AI features. It also says the cause may be that you excluded the site from those features. The help page gives no impression count at which the report appears.
Do I need Bing Webmaster Tools if my customers use Google?
Not if you only want visits: Bing's report counts citations in Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partner integrations, and lists no visit metric. Microsoft says a local business can also register with Bing Places for Business to keep its address, hours and contact details current and eligible for AI-generated responses. How many of your customers use Copilot is unknown.
What counts as a real change in AI visits?
Wait for 3 months in a row and a count of at least 10 a month; both are our rule of thumb, not a published threshold. Chance alone moves a count of 10 by about 3, its square root, so a rise from 3 visits to 5 is within chance. At 1,000 sessions a month, one visit moves your share by 0.1 points.
Last updated October 6, 2026