How do I track traffic from ChatGPT and other AI assistants?
AI & Answer Engines — answered straight, by an operator who builds these systems rather than an agency selling them.
Check referral sources in your analytics for chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, and copilot.microsoft.com. That captures visitors who clicked a citation. It will not capture the larger group who read the answer, never clicked, and called you directly — so pair it with call tracking and a "how did you hear about us" question.
The longer version
Expect the referral numbers to look small and the influence to be larger than they look. Assistants answer inline; a good citation can produce a phone call with no session attached to it at all. Judging AEO purely on referral traffic will undercount it badly.
The practical instrument is a two-part one: watch AI referrers in analytics for direction, and ask every caller how they found you. Cheap, low-tech, and it catches the invisible half.
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