GEO & AI search

AI traffic attribution

Definition

The practice of identifying visits and orders that started with an AI assistant or AI search feature, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews or AI Mode, and assigning them revenue credit under a stated attribution model. It covers both the classification (which sessions count as AI) and the credit rule (how much of an order the AI touch earns).

Defined in AI Traffic and Attribution: How to Measure What ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Mode Send Your Store.

Where AI traffic attribution comes up

The guides that put this term to work, rather than just defining it.

Related terms

AI Overviews: The AI-generated summary Google shows at the top of some regular search results pages, with links to the sources it draws on. Search Console treats an AI Overview as a single position on the results page: every link inside it gets that same position.
AI Mode: Google Search's conversational mode, launched in the U.S. on May 20, 2025. Google describes it as using a "query fan-out" technique that breaks a question into subtopics and searches each one. In Search Console, a follow-up question in AI Mode counts as a new query.
Attribution model: The rule an analytics tool uses to divide credit for a conversion among the touchpoints that preceded it. Last-click models give all credit to the final qualifying visit. Data-driven models spread credit based on how each touchpoint changed the observed likelihood of converting.
Google AI Overviews: AI-generated summary panels shown above traditional results in Google Search, which can cite and link to product pages the way a human-written snippet used to.
AI-attributed revenue: Purchase revenue from sessions whose source GA4 can identify as an AI assistant, using last-click attribution within the session. It excludes purchases influenced by AI answers that arrived through Organic Search, Direct or another channel, so it understates AI's total effect.
AI Assistant channel: A channel in GA4's default channel group for visits from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok. Its rule is that the medium exactly matches ai-assistant. GA4 sets that medium, and the campaign (ai-assistant), when the referrer matches Google's list of AI assistants. Google says the channel excludes its own AI Overviews and AI Mode.

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What is AI invisibility costing you?

Revenue at risk from AI shopping channels, with the formula shown so you can check the maths.

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