How can a law firm measure traffic and cases from AI search?

1. 1

   Open the traffic acquisition report

   View it by the session channel group and find the AI Assistant row. Google sets the medium to "ai-assistant" when the referrer matches its list of AI assistants.

2. 2

   Check the sources inside it

   Add Session source as a second dimension. If a tool you expect, such as Perplexity, appears under Referral instead, note it and count it with the AI line by hand.

3. 3

   Mark the actions that matter as key events

   A form submission, a tap on the phone number, a booked consultation. Without key events, GA4 can count AI visits but not what they did.

4. 4

   Look at landing pages

   Which pages AI tools send people to tells you which pages they quote, and which ones deserve the next update.

5. 5

   Compare month to month, never day to day

   Volumes are small for most firms. A handful of visits either way in a week means nothing.

If your property uses a custom channel group, check it has an AI line above Referral, or AI visits disappear into referrals. Our measurement plan for our own site puts an AI line above Referral for exactly that reason. Our attribution guide covers how GA4 fits with the CRM.

Total citations and average cited pages

How often your content appeared as a source in the period, and how many of your pages were cited per day on average. Microsoft says neither number indicates ranking or placement within an answer.

Grounding queries

The phrases the AI used when it retrieved your content. Microsoft says this is a sample. For a law firm it's the closest thing to seeing the questions behind the citations.

Page-level citations and trend

Which URLs get cited and how that changes over time. Pages cited for the right questions are the ones worth keeping fresh.

It reports citations, not visits or calls. Treat it as a visibility measure next to GA4's visit counts. Our guide to how Copilot picks law firms covers setting up Bing Webmaster Tools.

Name it plainly

"ChatGPT or another AI assistant" as a dropdown option. If it isn't on the list, people pick "Google" or "Other", and the AI line stays at zero.

Ask a follow-up on calls

"Was that a Google search, or did you ask something like ChatGPT?" One extra question at intake, and the answer goes in the CRM in the caller's words.

Carry it to the outcome

An AI-sourced lead that signs is the number that matters. Count consultations and signed cases for the AI source the same way as every paid channel.

When AI search works, the calls tend to be people who already decided they want you. One family law firm that now shows up first in ChatGPT has added 50 to 100 calls a month over the last three months, is signing a lot of them, and reports that the lead quality is incredible. More on how those clients choose on our family law marketing page.

• No AI company reports how often it showed your firm's name. Prompt checks are a sample, not a census.
• Google doesn't split AI Overviews or AI Mode out of Search Console, and GA4 counts their clicks as Organic Search.
• Answers vary by run, by day, and by whether the person is signed in, so any single check can be off.
• People who read your name and call without clicking only show up if intake asks.

What we see in our client work is that AI search usually shows up as "more calls overall" before it shows up as a neat line. A family law firm we worked with pivoted fully into estate planning, and prospective clients started finding it inside ChatGPT and similar tools, not just Google. Our AI search service reports all four measurements each month, labeled as a floor.