The New Rules of AI Search

16Tracking LLM Traffic: Finding Your Brand in the AI Sandbox

The digital landscape has shifted under our feet. Users are increasingly turning to LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity—not just for writing emails, but as sophisticated engines to find information, products, and services. For CMOs and marketing leaders, this introduces a critical new traffic source. If LLMs are the new Gossip Girl of the internet, you need to know if your brand is the one they're talking about. Tracking this traffic requires specialized monitoring to understand your brand's visibility and growth potential. Here is how you can set up your tracking to see exactly who is arriving from the AI sandbox and what they are looking for.

Catching the AI Referrers

GA4 is your first line of defense in identifying users arriving directly from AI platforms. Because AI traffic often appears fragmented, it can feel like trying to keep up with a dozen different group chats. You must create custom filters to see the full picture.

• Isolate growth potential. Use traffic reports to estimate how much of your audience is migrating to AI platforms over traditional search.
• Identify valuable channels. Tracking referrers helps you understand which specific AI bots are your most valuable referral sources.
• The master regex. In the User Acquisition report, create a filter for “Session source/medium” using a “matches partial regex” match type. Use a comprehensive string to capture all major players: openai|chatgpt|copilot|gemini|gpt|perplexity|bard|deepseek|claude|meta\.ai ...