AI Referral Check — Nano-Playbook

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI tools are now sending real traffic to websites. Google Analytics 4 tracks this under the source “chatgpt.com” (or similar). Most business owners have no idea this is happening. This 2-minute check shows you exactly which of your pages AI considers worth citing — so you know where to invest more effort and what kind of content AI already trusts you for.

Open Traffic Acquisition in GA4

Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition

Switch the dimension to Source / Medium

By default, the report groups traffic by channel. You need to see the actual source. Click the small dropdown arrow next to the primary dimension and change it to Session source / medium. Then type chatgpt.com in the search bar.

Click the dropdown arrow next to the primary dimension
Select Session source / medium
Type chatgpt.com in the search bar

What you’ll see: If ChatGPT has sent any traffic to your site, a row for “chatgpt.com / referral” will appear with session counts, engagement time, and conversions. If nothing shows up, AI hasn’t cited your site yet — check the companion playbook “Get Cited by AI” for how to fix that.

Find which pages AI is citing

Now you know AI sends traffic. The next question is: which specific pages? Navigate to the pages report and filter by ChatGPT sessions.

Engagement → Pages and screens
Click Add filter
Dimension: Session source
Match type: contains
Value: chatgpt
Apply

The table now shows every page on your site that has received at least one visit from ChatGPT. Sort by sessions to see your most-cited pages first.

Read the pattern and take action

Look at the pages AI keeps citing. There’s usually a pattern — listicles, how-to guides, comparison pages, or pages with clear structured data. These are the formats AI considers useful enough to reference.

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Double down

Publish more content in the same format as your top-cited pages

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Optimise

Update cited pages with fresher data, better structure, and schema markup

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Interlink

Link from cited pages to your money pages (services, booking, products)

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Schedule it

Set a monthly calendar reminder to re-run this check and track growth

Other AI sources to check

ChatGPT isn’t the only one. Repeat the same filter using perplexity, copilot.microsoft, and gemini as source values. Each AI tool shows up as a separate referral source in GA4. You might be getting cited by one and not the others.

Quick checklist

Opened GA4 → Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition
Changed dimension to Session source / medium and searched for chatgpt.com
Navigated to Engagement → Pages and screens with ChatGPT session filter applied
Identified which pages AI is citing and spotted the format pattern
Checked for Perplexity, Copilot, and Gemini referral sources too
Set a monthly reminder to re-run this check