Why Direct Traffic Is Rising in GA4, and How Much of It Is AI

If Direct traffic has jumped in your GA4 reports while organic has slipped, AI is likely to be part of the reason. More people are getting their answers inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews, so fewer need to click through from search. When someone does click a link in an AI tool, the visit doesn't always tell your analytics where it came from, so it can land in Direct, and for one week in October a bug in ChatGPT made that much worse. But AI isn't always the whole story. When we checked six accounts, five clients and our own site, a large share of the Direct growth in the accounts where it rose most was overseas traffic that looks automated. Before you explain the numbers to anyone, it's worth checking how much of your rise is AI.

What happened with ChatGPT in October

Search Engine Roundtable reported that after the GPT-6 rollout, ChatGPT links had stopped carrying the tag that identifies them and were opening without a referrer, so those visits landed in Direct. Adobe's Cedric Huesler says OpenAI told him on 14 October it was a bug, and a fix began rolling out the next day. OpenAI hasn't commented publicly. If your ChatGPT visits dropped in the second week of October and Direct ticked up, that's the likely reason, and the numbers should have recovered since.

We saw the dip ourselves. At one account, visits GA4 labelled as AI fell from about four a day to under two that week, then recovered once the fix arrived. But it was a handful of visits a day against Direct traffic in the hundreds, too small on its own to explain months of Direct growth.

GA4's native AI Assistant channel, added in May 2026, gives every account a labelled count of AI visits with no setup. At that same account, it picked up 140 of the 144 AI visits we found by searching manually. It doesn't count clicks from Google's own AI Overviews and AI Mode, which sit in organic search, and a visit with no referrer or tag still lands in Direct, as October showed. So it's a floor, not the full picture. But a floor you can trust is a better starting point than a guess.

What to tell your AI Search leadership

If your management is asking why organic is down and Direct is up, the honest answer is that AI is probably part of it, and a few reports will tell you how big a part. Start by breaking Direct down by country and device in GA4's Traffic acquisition report. Growth from your local market, on the devices your customers use, landing on pages that make sense, deserves attention, because some of it may be AI. Desktop traffic from Singapore landing on old blog posts is very unlikely to be your customers. Next, check when the rise started. A site launch, tracking change, or campaign is the first suspect. Be careful with engagement rate as a test. At one account, a tracking change had pushed it to around 95% for almost everything, bots included.

For organic, look at Search Console as well as GA4. If impressions are holding but clicks are falling, that fits people getting their answer on the page. If impressions are falling too, it's a different problem.

What we found in six accounts

We compared 1 September to 25 October with the same period last year. Direct was up about 43% at a multi-location service business, around 20% at a consumer brand, and more than tripled on our own site. In three of the five accounts with a year of history, organic was down. On the surface, it looked like the AI story, and in part it was.

Breaking Direct down by country and device showed it wasn't the whole picture. At the multi-location business, most of the growth was desktop visits from Singapore and the US. Singapore alone went from about 2,000 Direct sessions to about 6,600, while Direct visits from New Zealand fell. At the consumer brand, the extra traffic was mostly overseas mobile visits, mainly from the US and India, that did almost nothing and landed on old news posts. One article went from 2 Direct visits to 190 in three weeks. GA4 doesn't label this as bots, but real New Zealand customers don't arrive from India on old blog posts and leave straight away. The New Zealand slice was far less dramatic: up about 11% at the consumer brand, and down about 11% at the multi-location business. That's where unlabelled AI visits are most likely to sit, so it's the number worth watching.

Being mentioned isn't the same as being clicked

We also track how often businesses are mentioned in AI answers by running the questions their customers ask through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews. For one of the consumer brand's product lines, it was named in about three answers in four, and in 17 of 19 AI Overviews. Over almost eight weeks, AI tools sent one identifiable visit straight to that product's pages. Most of that influence never arrives as a visit, as we covered in AI Search Builds Brands Before Anyone Clicks.

A B2B services business we work with was named in just over half the answers we tested, and its own website was the second most-cited source across those answers. AI tools sent it about 0.8% of its sessions in September, the highest share of the accounts we checked, and those visits produce conversions every month. In one of its markets, the multi-location business was named in about one answer in nine, and in 2 of 79 AI Overviews. AI sent it under 0.3% of sessions, and its organic traffic is down about 30% on last year. We can't prove those are linked, but it fits. These are single snapshots, not a league table, but they show why measuring whether your brand appears in the answer matters as much as counting clicks. AI is changing how people find businesses, and your own data will show how much of that is turning up in Direct.

Want to know what AI says about your business?

ADMATIC's free AI search first look takes the questions a few typical customers would ask and runs them through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. You'll see how often your business is named, who gets recommended instead, which sources AI relies on, and how it describes you today. It's a single snapshot, so treat it as a starting point rather than a benchmark. Request your free first look.

Frequently asked questions

Does GA4 track traffic from ChatGPT and other AI tools?

Yes. Since 13 May 2026, GA4's default channel group has included an AI Assistant channel that labels visits from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini automatically. It only catches visits that arrive with a referrer or tag. Clicks from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted as Organic Search instead.

Why does some ChatGPT traffic show up as Direct in GA4?

GA4 files a visit as Direct when it arrives with no referrer and no tracking tag. ChatGPT often opens links without a referrer, so GA4 relies on the utm_source=chatgpt.com tag ChatGPT adds. Between about 8 and 15 October 2026, a bug after the GPT-6 rollout dropped that tag, pushing those clicks into Direct until a fix rolled out.

Should I set up a custom AI channel group in GA4?

A custom channel group is worth setting up if AI traffic matters to your reporting. GA4's AI Assistant channel caught most AI visits in the accounts we checked, but some ChatGPT visits arrived labelled as organic or with no medium. A custom group that matches on source, covering chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai and gemini.google.com, gathers them in one line.

How much traffic do AI tools actually send to NZ websites?

In the accounts we checked, the AI visits GA4 could identify were small, between about 0.3% and 0.8% of sessions in September. The real figure is higher, because some AI clicks land in Direct and clicks from AI Overviews count as organic. At one account, those visits produce conversions every month, so they're worth tracking.

Author: Rod Russell, Managing Partner, ADMATIC, 27th October 2026