FeaturesAI Engine Traffic
AI Search VisibilityRankerli

AI Engine Traffic

People stopped asking Google and started asking ChatGPT. This is where that shows up.

See which AI assistants send you visitors — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and 16 more — which pages they cite, and how that traffic compares to organic search.

The Problem

AI assistants are already sending you traffic — your analytics just isn't naming it

When ChatGPT cites your page and someone clicks through, the visit arrives with a referrer like chatgpt.com and lands in a bucket called "Referral", mixed in with newsletters and forum links. Google Analytics added an "AI Assistant" channel in 2025, but it only recognises the assistants Google has written a rule for — regional ones, newer ones, and anything whose referrer was rewritten in transit fall straight through. So the first real signal that AI search matters to your business is a number nobody is looking at, filed under a name that means nothing.

Unnamed

AI visits sitting in a generic "Referral" bucket

Partial

coverage from GA4's own AI channel grouping

No answer

when a client asks "are we showing up in ChatGPT?"

How It Works

See it in action

AI Engine Traffic turns raw Search Console data into clear signals and next steps.

01

Connect GA4 — that's the whole setup

No tag to install, no script to add, no tracking parameter to maintain. If your GA4 property is connected, the referrers are already in it and the tab fills in.

02

Every assistant gets named

Rankerli matches the referring host against 20 known assistants and layers Google's own AI channel on top as a catch-all — so an engine Google recognises but we haven't seen still appears, labelled by its host, the day it starts sending traffic.

03

See what it's worth next to organic

Sessions, engagement rate, conversions and revenue for AI and organic side by side, plus the pages assistants cite and where those visitors are.

What You Gain

The value of having the right data

Answer the question every client is now asking

"Are we visible in AI search?" stops being a shrug and becomes a number, a trend line, and a list of the pages earning citations.

Catch the shift while it's still small

AI referrals are single digits on most sites today and growing fast. Seeing the ramp at 11 sessions a month is worth far more than noticing it at 1,100.

Learn which content AI actually cites

The landing page list is the feedback loop. The pages assistants link to share a format — depth, structure, how quotable the answer is — and that's the pattern worth repeating.

Measure quality, not just volume

Engagement rate is scale-free, so a channel of 40 sessions can be judged against one of 4,000. If AI visitors engage better than organic, the traffic is small but pre-qualified — and that changes what it's worth.

Without This Feature

Without AI Engine Traffic, the fastest-growing channel in search is invisible to you

AI referrals stay buried in a "Referral" bucket alongside newsletters and forum links

You rely on GA4's channel grouping, which misses every assistant Google hasn't written a rule for

You can't tell a client whether their content is being cited by AI assistants or ignored by them

You never learn which of your pages AI answers link to — so you can't write more of them

Capabilities

What it does

Detects referrals from 20 AI assistants by referring host, not just Google's own "AI Assistant" channel — so it catches the ones Google hasn't added a rule for yet.

Breaks traffic down by engine with growth against the previous period, including assistants that sent traffic last month and none this month.

Shows a stacked trend so you can see exactly when each assistant started sending people.

Lists the landing pages assistants cite, tagged by engine — the pages earning your citations.

Compares AI against organic search on sessions, engagement, conversions and revenue, plus an AI-sessions-per-1,000-organic index.

Pin any single engine and the whole tab narrows to it: what does ChatGPT specifically send you, and where does it land?

Counts click-throughs, not silent citations — an assistant that answers inline leaves no referrer, and no analytics product can see it. We say so in the interface rather than implying coverage we don't have.

How teams use it

  • Diagnose traffic shifts in minutes and confirm the root cause with supporting metrics.
  • Prioritize fixes and content updates based on the most impactful signals.
  • Share concise, supported performance summaries with clients and leadership.

Ready to stop guessing?

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