Marketing analytics were built for a world where discovery happened in search results and social feeds, and the “click” was the center of gravity.
AI changed that.
Today, people can ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, or Google’s AI experiences a question, get a complete answer, and never click. Your content can be informing thousands of AI responses, your brand can be recommended in conversations you never see, and your analytics dashboard can show… nothing.
That gap is the problem.
AI platforms often pass messy referral data (or none at all), citations do not always turn into visits, and “visibility” can grow while “traffic” stays flat. If you are measuring AI impact with traditional tools alone, you are almost certainly undercounting what is happening.
AI Visibility vs. AI Traffic: Two Different Questions
Before we get tactical, it helps to separate two concepts that get lumped together:
- AI visibility: Are you being mentioned or cited in AI answers?
- AI traffic: Did someone click from an AI experience and actually land on your site?
Both matter, but they live in different places. Visibility is upstream awareness and influence. Traffic is downstream behavior and revenue.
That’s why you need a stack, not a single report.
Think of measurement as a 3-layer flow:
- Google Analytics (GA4): The “tip of the iceberg;” what actually clicks through, engages, and converts.
- Google Search Console: Google’s AI layer (AI Overviews and AI Mode), measured inside Google Search reporting, with known counting rules.
- Peec AI: Upstream AI visibility, position, and sentiment across major AI platforms.
GA4: Measure What Actually Clicks and Converts
GA4 is the bottom of the funnel for AI measurement. It captures the small percentage of AI exposure that turns into real sessions, real engagement, and real conversions.
It’s also where most brands are currently blind, because AI traffic often gets miscategorized or buried.
How to Spot Referral Traffic
Start simple: look for AI platforms in session source and referral traffic.
Common referrers include:
- chat.openai.com
- perplexity.ai
- claude.ai
- gemini.google.com (and other Google AI surfaces that pass referrers)
In GA4, the Traffic acquisition report is the fastest place to start, because it’s built to show where sessions are coming from.
Stop AI Traffic from Getting Lumped into Direct
A major reason AI traffic disappears is missing referrer data. When a referrer is not passed, GA4 often buckets the session into Direct, which makes AI-driven visits look like “nothing happened.”
A clean fix is creating a custom channel group (or a dedicated “AI Referrals” channel) that catches known AI sources using rules based on source and medium. Google’s GA4 documentation walks through creating and editing channel groups in Admin.
Once AI has its own channel, you can monitor it like any other acquisition source, without losing it inside Direct.
The Conversion Rate Hook: Why Tiny Volumes Still Matter
In many accounts, AI-referred visits behave differently than standard organic traffic, fewer sessions, but higher intent. That makes conversion rate and lead quality a compelling angle to lead with.
Even if volume is small today, the “quality per visit” is often strong, and the trendline is what you care about. Google has also argued that clicks from its AI search experiences can be “higher quality” in terms of user engagement, which matches what many teams see when AI visitors do arrive.
Google Search Console: Google's AI Layer and the Click-Through Shift
Google Search Console is your best window into what’s happening inside Google Search, including Google’s AI experiences. But the way you interpret the data has to evolve.
What Search Console Can and Cannot Show
Search Console counts clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode as part of Search reporting, and Google documents how those clicks, impressions, and positions are recorded.
For example, Google notes that:
- Clicking a link in an AI Overview counts as a click
- An impression requires the link to be scrolled into view or expanded into view
- AI Overviews occupy a single search position, and links inherit that position
The limitation is important, though: Search Console does not give you a clean “AI Overview” filter that isolates how often Overviews appear or when you were cited. Industry coverage has highlighted this as a real measurement blind spot in the current Search Console interface.
It’s also important to note that Search Console is Google-only, meaning it can’t tell you about what is happening in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and the rest of the AI ecosystem. That is where Peec AI comes in.
The Key Pattern: Impressions Up, Clicks Flat, Click-Through Rate Down
This is the moment many teams panic, but it is often a signal, not a failure.
When Google surfaces your page in AI-driven experiences, users may get the answer without needing to click. Multiple studies have shown that when AI summaries appear, users are less likely to click through to external websites.
So if you see impressions rising and clicks lagging, you may be “winning” AI inclusion while “losing” traditional click behavior. That tradeoff is exactly why AI visibility and AI traffic must be measured separately.
Peec AI: Visibility, Position, Sentiment, and Competitive Share of Voice
Peec AI is purpose-built for the biggest AI measurement gap: understanding what AI platforms say about you, even when nobody clicks.
At a high level, Peec runs your tracked prompts against AI platforms on a recurring cadence and reports performance over time, including visibility trends against competitors.
Prompts Are Conversational, Not Keyword-Based
Traditional SEO tools start with keywords, while AI discovery starts with questions.
Peec’s model maps to how people actually use AI:
- “What’s the best CRM for a 10-person agency?”
- “Which project management tool is best for creative teams?”
- “What is the most reliable option for X?”
That prompt framing matters, because it mirrors real AI usage patterns better than keyword lists.
Brand Mentions vs. Source Citations
Some of the most useful distinctions Peec tracks are:
- Brand visibility: your brand is explicitly mentioned
- Source visibility: your site or content is used or cited, even if your brand name is not
That gap is often the playbook. If you are cited but not named, you have influence without recognition. On the other hand, if you are mentioned but not cited, you may have awareness without trust.
Peec calls this out directly, and it is one of the clearest ways to turn “AI visibility” into specific actions. Peec’s visibility graph and competitor comparison are valuable because AI discovery is competitive in a new way. You can lose visibility to a competitor in AI answers long before you see ranking changes in traditional SEO tools.
How the AI Visibility Stack Works in Practice
Peec AI tells you if you are visible, where you rank, and how you are described across major AI platforms. Google Search Console shows how your content performs in Google Search, including how AI experiences change click behavior and reporting mechanics. And last, but not least, GA4 confirms what actually arrives, engages, and converts after you correctly segment AI referrals and channel group them.
Building a simple reporting cadence keeps you out of reactive mode and turns AI measurement into an operating system:
- Weekly: Peec visibility trends, competitor movement, GA4 AI referral segment conversion rate
- Monthly: Search Console performance review, watch for rising impressions paired with falling click-through rate
- Quarterly: Content audit driven by (1) what AI cites and (2) which landing pages receive AI visits
Ensure Your Brand Shows Up in AI Search with SteadyRain
Brands running on GA4 and Google Search Console alone are flying with a significant blind spot. AI visibility is increasingly upstream of demand, and often invisible to click-based analytics. The stack has a third layer now, and most teams have not added it yet.
If you’re ready to elevate your brand’s visibility in AI platforms, SteadyRain can help. Our AI consulting services are designed to elevate your internal efficiency while expanding your reach in AI search. To see how we can help optimize your online presence, contact our AI experts today.
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