How to tell AI visits apart in your store's analytics
30 October 2026
Two kinds of AI traffic reach a store, and they leave different traces. A person who clicks a link in an AI answer usually arrives with the assistant as the referrer, and ChatGPT tags many of its links with utm_source=chatgpt.com. An agent browsing your store for a shopper leaves no mark of its own in your reports: it opens your pages in a browser, as a person does, and counts as an ordinary visit.
People sent by an AI answer
These are shoppers who asked an assistant and clicked a link it gave them. Look for these signals:
| Signal | Where it shows | Assistant |
|---|---|---|
Referrer chatgpt.com or chat.openai.com | Source or referrer | ChatGPT |
utm_source=chatgpt.com on the landing page's address | Source | ChatGPT, as OpenAI documents |
Referrer perplexity.ai | Source or referrer | Perplexity |
Referrer gemini.google.com | Source or referrer | Gemini |
Referrer copilot.microsoft.com | Source or referrer | Microsoft Copilot |
Referrer claude.ai | Source or referrer | Claude |
Google Analytics 4 puts visits from known AI assistants in a channel of their own, AI Assistant. Neither signal is always there: some apps open links without sending a referrer, and Search Engine Roundtable reported in October 2026 that some ChatGPT links arrived with neither. A visit with no referrer and no tag is counted as direct.
Agents browsing for a shopper
A browser agent opens your pages in a real browser, so your pages' scripts run and the visit can count as an ordinary session. What sets it apart is not in your analytics: an agent that follows Shopify's guidance signs its requests with Web Bot Auth, and Shopify checks the signature on its own side. What Web Bot Auth is.
Fetchers that read a page to answer a question, such as ChatGPT-User, usually do not run your pages' scripts, so script-based analytics such as Google Analytics do not count them at all.
Visits from deciq
Our agents arrive on a link tagged utm_source=deciq and utm_medium=agent-visit, so their visits show under that source. They browse in Chrome from Amazon Web Services addresses in the United States and sign their requests. How to recognise a visit from deciq.
Questions
Why did my ChatGPT traffic drop while sales did not?
Visits that arrive with no referrer and no tag are counted as direct. If visits from ChatGPT fall while direct visits to the same pages rise, the visits may only have lost their label.
Does an AI agent's visit count as a session?
A browser agent runs your pages as a person's browser does, so it can be counted as a session. A fetcher that reads a page without running its scripts usually is not.
Can I see which agent visited?
Only when the agent leaves a mark you can read, such as a tag on the link it opens. A Web Bot Auth signature names the agent, but on Shopify it is checked on Shopify's side, not shown in your analytics.
We built deciq to show you where AI shopping agents stop on your own store. Eight agents visit, each on a different shopper's errand, and the report shows where each one stopped and what to change.
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