How to Track Website Traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and AI Overviews

This year I’m putting more focus on GEO experiments—that’s Generative Engine Optimization. In short, it’s about making your site more visible on AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Google’s AI Overviews.

Traditional SEO is still about ranking on Google or Bing—helping your website appear higher in standard search results. GEO, on the other hand, focuses on visibility and discoverability within AI-powered search environments, where algorithms may prioritize information in new ways. Last year, I didn’t take much action on GEO for a few reasons:

• AI search products were changing too fast, and there wasn’t enough data to work with.
• And frankly, there just wasn’t enough data to work with.

But things are different now. We finally have more GEO data coming in, and it’s time to start paying attention. Let me walk you through how you can check both your own AI-driven traffic and what your competitors are getting.

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1. Tracking Your Own AI Search Traffic

The easiest way to do this is with GA4. Here’s a quick workflow:

Step 1: In GA4, open the standard report Traffic acquisition: Session default channel group.

Then click Add filter.

Step 2: In the filter settings, select:

• Dimension → Session source
• Match type → matches partial regex
• Value → chatgpt|perplexity|gemini.google.com|chat.openai.com|copilot

Step 3: Switch the dimension to Session source.

That’s it—you’ll now see traffic coming in from AI search engines.

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What you can actually learn

① Trend analysis
For example, my site saw a clear spike in October 2024. Not because I optimized for AI, but simply because more people were using AI search tools.

② Comparing traffic sources
On my site, ChatGPT drives the most visits, followed by Perplexity. Interestingly, Gemini is already catching up—it’s not widely talked about, but the numbers show it’s relevant.

③ Engagement and conversions
GA4 also lets you check how sticky this traffic is, and whether it converts into sales.

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2. Looking at Competitors

To check competitors, you’ll need third-party tools. I’ve been using Similarweb.

AI traffic is listed there under Incoming Traffic. Enter a competitor’s domain, filter the sources, and you’ll see how much of their traffic comes from AI search engines.

Similarweb even shows AI Overview results now:

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Final Thoughts

Don't just read about it—open GA4 now, start checking your AI-driven traffic, and compare it against your SEO baseline to understand your full traffic picture.

Traditional SEO still delivers the strongest results for traffic and sales. AI search is growing, but I expect it to complement rather than replace SEO for now. Keep an eye on both GEO and SEO as they develop.