# What is LLM attribution and which AI visits can be measured?

> What LLM attribution is, how Google Analytics detects visits from ChatGPT or Gemini, what ends up as direct or organic, and how to read it in your store.

URL: https://clione.ai/glossary/llm-attribution/
Lang: en

In marketing, attribution means splitting the credit for a sale among the channels that made it possible. Attribution for assistants built on an [LLM (large language model)](/glossary/llm/) applies that idea to a new question: **of your store's visits and orders, which ones come from ChatGPT, from [Gemini](/glossary/gemini/) or from Claude?** It is not the same as knowing whether an assistant names you, which is a matter of [AI citation](/glossary/ai-citation/), nor as raw [AI referral traffic](/glossary/ai-referral-traffic/): it means joining those visits to what happens next and saying honestly which part cannot be seen. For a store, it is the way to go from "AI recommends us" to "AI brings us orders", or to find out that it doesn't.

## How it works

The analytics tool does not know where a visit comes from: it infers it from three signals, and each one has its limit.

**The referrer.** When someone clicks a link, the browser can send the address of the page they came from in the `Referer` header. How much it sends is decided by the referrer policy. The one applied by default, if the originating page does not set another, sends **only the origin** (the domain, without the path) when the jump goes to another site and both use HTTPS, and sends nothing if the destination is less secure. With the `no-referrer` policy, the header is never sent.[^mdn-referrer-policy] So, at best, your store knows the visit came from an assistant's domain, never from which conversation. Google Analytics uses that data: the page referrer field defaults to the browser's value and is used to work out the traffic source.[^ga4-config]

**The campaign tags.** The `utm_` parameters on a link (`utm_source`, `utm_medium`, `utm_campaign` and others) declare the source, the medium and the campaign explicitly, and Google Analytics treats them as the visit's campaign data.[^ga4-config] When a link does not carry them, or a redirect strips them, that information is lost.[^ga4-direct]

**The channel.** Since May 13, 2026, Google Analytics has its own channel, AI Assistant, in its default channel group. **When the referrer matches a recognized AI assistant, it assigns the visit the medium `ai-assistant` and the campaign `(ai-assistant)`**, and groups it in that channel; Google gives ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude as examples.[^ga4-whats-new] The channel's definition also names Deepseek, [Copilot](/glossary/copilot/) and Grok, and explicitly excludes Google's [AI Overviews](/glossary/ai-overviews/) and [AI Mode](/glossary/google-ai-mode/).[^ga4-channels] Those two features go to the organic search channel, which according to Google includes the links from AI Overviews and AI Mode.[^ga4-channels] And in [Search Console](/glossary/google-search-console/), clicking an external link in either one counts as a click in the performance report.[^gsc-metrics]

**What cannot be attributed.** A visit with no referrer and no campaign tags ends up as `(direct) / (none)`, the traffic that, in Google's words, has no clear referring source. Among the causes it gives are links without `utm_` parameters, redirects that strip them, typing the address by hand and ad blockers.[^ga4-direct] If someone reads a recommendation in an assistant and then types your store's name into the browser or searches for it on Google, **the visit exists, but the credit goes to direct or organic search**. And a mention of your brand without a link leaves no signal to attribute.

## In a store

A backpack store opens the traffic acquisition report in Google Analytics for September, by default channel group, and breaks the AI Assistant channel down by source and medium. This is a **fictional example**: the domains and figures are made up to show how to read the report.

| Channel (fictional example) | Sessions | Purchases |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------- | --------- |
| Organic Search                                                             | 8,400    | 96        |
| Direct                                                                     | 3,100    | 41        |
| AI Assistant                                                               | 260      | 4         |
| Referral                                                                   | 900      | 7         |

Within AI Assistant, each source and medium row has the form `example-assistant.com / ai-assistant`, and the source says which assistant it came from. In the request the store receives, the only clue is a header like this one, with the origin and no path:

```http
GET /urban-backpack-20 HTTP/1.1
Host: example-store.com
Referer: https://example-assistant.com/
```

The useful reading is not the AI Assistant row on its own. It is that **that row is the minimum**: the visits that came from AI Overviews are inside Organic Search, the ones that arrived with no referrer are inside Direct, and the ones that started with a mention without a link are nowhere. If you compare with earlier months, remember the channel has existed only since May 13, 2026.[^ga4-whats-new]


**The AI Assistant channel is not everything AI brings you.** It leaves out AI Overviews and AI Mode, which Google counts as organic search,[^ga4-channels] and it does not pick up visits that arrive with no referrer or campaign tags, which end up in direct.[^ga4-direct] Reading that channel as "AI traffic" undercounts what is happening; adding all of direct to it overstates it. The honest move is to give the attributed figure and say what is left out.


## How to check it

1. **Open traffic acquisition in Google Analytics by default channel group** and look for the AI Assistant row, with dates after May 13, 2026.[^ga4-whats-new]
2. **Break it down by source and medium.** The medium will be `ai-assistant` and the source will tell you which assistant brought each visit.[^ga4-whats-new]
3. **For Google's AI, go to Search Console.** Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are in the performance report, mixed in with classic results,[^gsc-metrics] and the [generative AI performance report](/glossary/generative-ai-performance-report/) gives their impressions.
4. **Check which pages get direct traffic.** A deep [product page](/glossary/product-page/) that nobody would type by hand and that gets many direct visits is a hint of lost referrers, not proof.[^ga4-direct]
5. **Join the visits to the orders.** Clione, with Google Analytics connected, relates the store's orders to the visits that produced them, says which ones arrived from AI assistants and which AI sources cannot be measured, and shows each difference with the margin that says when it may be noise.

## Related concept: AI citation

[AI citation](/glossary/ai-citation/) happens inside the answer: the assistant links your page as a source. Attribution starts afterward, when someone clicks that link and lands on your store. The two are measured with different tools: citations, by reading answers or with the reports that count them; attribution, with your analytics. And they are related imperfectly: **many citations may bring no visits, and a mention without a link can end in an order that arrives as direct**. That is why a store needs both readings and should not deduce one from the other.

To keep going, the [measurement and verification reading path](/learn/measurement-and-verification/) puts the rest of the terms in order, and the entry on [assisted conversion](/glossary/assisted-conversion/) explains how credit is split when a sale passes through several channels.