Stop losing AI traffic to "direct".
Build UTM-tagged links with presets for every major AI platform, so referrals from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini show up as themselves in GA4 rather than vanishing into direct traffic.
Three fields, proper attribution.
Enter your destination URL
Any page on your site. The tagged version behaves identically for visitors, it just carries attribution parameters.
Pick a platform preset
One click fills the source and medium correctly for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot or Grok. Consistency matters more than the exact values you choose.
Use the links and report on them
Place them anywhere an AI system might surface a link to you, then build a GA4 exploration filtered on your medium to see AI traffic grouped in one place.
AI research is invisible to your analytics.
This is the measurement problem nobody has solved cleanly. Someone asks an assistant for a recommendation, forms a preference, and arrives on your site days later by typing your name. Your analytics credits that visit to direct. The AI conversation that actually created the demand leaves no trace at all.
Even when a click comes straight from an AI interface, attribution is inconsistent. Referrer headers vary by platform and by how the link was opened, so a meaningful share of genuine AI referrals still lands in direct or unassigned.
UTM tagging does not solve the invisible-research problem, and it would be dishonest to claim otherwise. What it does solve is the links you control. Anywhere you place a link that an AI system might surface, a tagged URL means the visit is attributed correctly rather than guessed at.
Combine that with two other signals for a realistic picture: watch branded search volume in Search Console, since AI-driven research usually surfaces there first, and add a self-reported how did you hear about us field to your enquiry forms. Between them you get much closer to the truth than any dashboard currently provides.
AI attribution questions.
Why does AI traffic show up as direct?
Two reasons. Most AI research never produces a click at all, so the eventual visit arrives as direct or branded search days later. And when a click does happen, referrer information is inconsistent across platforms and depends on how the link was opened, so a share of genuine referrals is never attributed.
What UTM values should I use?
Use the platform hostname as the source, such as chatgpt.com, and a consistent medium such as ai_referral so every AI platform groups together in reporting. The exact values matter far less than using them consistently, because inconsistency is what makes reporting useless.
Will UTM tags hurt my SEO?
Not if used correctly. Keep tagged URLs out of your sitemap and internal links, and make sure your canonical tags point to the clean version. Tagged URLs are for external placements, not for linking around your own site.
Can I track AI traffic without UTMs?
Partially. In GA4 you can build an exploration filtered on session source containing the AI hostnames, which catches referrals that do pass a referrer. It will miss everything else. UTM tagging plus branded search monitoring plus a self-reported form field gives you a fuller picture than any single method.
Does this prove AI is driving revenue?
It proves the portion you can see, which is genuinely useful and better than nothing. Nobody can currently measure AI-influenced demand completely, and any vendor claiming full AI attribution is overstating what is technically possible today.
Want to know what AI says about you?
Attribution tells you who arrived. We tell you whether AI recommends you at all, to whom, and what your competitors are getting cited for instead.