Track AI assistant traffic in Adobe Analytics

Many AI assistant visits arrive without a referrer but still carry a UTM tag. Adobe Analytics can only count them if your implementation keeps that tag. So start there, then build one marketing channel that reads both signals. These steps reflect our tests as of October 2026; the scorecard shows the current state.

Using Customer Journey Analytics? See Track AI assistant traffic in Customer Journey Analytics.

1. Capture the UTM tag

The Referring Domain and Referrer dimensions only ever hold the referrer. When an assistant's app sends a tag and no referrer, the visit's only trace is utm_source in the landing page URL. If your implementation drops the query string, the visit lands in Direct, and no report rule can bring it back.

Check that one of these is true:

• The landing URL keeps its query string. Check that s.pageURL isn't overwritten with a cleaned URL, and that your tag manager doesn't strip parameters before the beacon fires.
• utm_source has its own variable. For example an eVar set by a processing rule from the query string parameter utm_source, or by s.Util.getQueryParam("utm_source") in your implementation.

To test it, open any page on your site with ?utm_source=attribution-test appended, then look for that value in your reports.

ChatGPT, Perplexity's apps and part of Copilot rely on the tag. Without it, those visits count as Direct. See Estimate your hidden AI traffic for how much each assistant sends this way.

2. Add an AI assistants marketing channel

1. In Marketing Channels > Processing Rules, add a channel named AI assistants.
2. Place it below your paid channels and above Natural Search, Referring Domains and Direct, so it wins.
3. Add one rule set that matches when any of these is true:
   • Referring Domain matches a referrer from the list below.
   • Query String Parameter utm_source equals a tag value from the list below.
4. Keep the Google exception: a visit tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com whose referring domain is a Google domain came from search. Exclude it, or put a Natural Search rule for that case above the AI channel.
5. Keep ChatGPT ad clicks out. OpenAI adds oppref or olref to the landing URL of ad clicks, whatever UTM tags you set. In a paid channel above AI assistants, match when Query String Parameter oppref or olref exists. To report everything ChatGPT sends you, show that channel next to AI assistants, not inside it.

Marketing channel rules apply only to new data, from the moment you save them. For past data, build a segment from the referring domain and your utm_source variable.

3. The values to match

Referrer hosts. Match the host or the host ending, so www. variants count:

utm_source values:

Adobe's guide to LLM and AI-generated traffic also lists m365.cloud.microsoft and meta.ai. Keep them.

4. Check it works

1. Ask an assistant to link to a page on your site, open the link, and find the visit in your AI assistants channel.
2. Repeat from a phone app, where the tag is often the only signal.
3. Recheck now and then. Assistants change their links without notice, and our changelog records each change we see.