Google Analytics 4

Overview

Connect your Google Analytics 4 property to see how AI visibility translates into real website traffic. AEO Optima identifies visits from AI referrer sources (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, etc.) and correlates them with your visibility scores.

What You Get

• AI referrer traffic — Sessions from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and other AI sources, broken out by source.
• Correlation analysis — See how changes in AI visibility scores align with traffic changes.
• Landing page performance — Which pages receive AI-referred traffic and how they perform.
• Automated daily sync — GA4 data is refreshed every day at 6AM UTC via a background cron job.

Prerequisites

• A Google Analytics 4 property (not Universal Analytics).
• The Google account must have Viewer access or above on the GA4 property.
• Your AEO Optima plan must be Pro-Individual or above (Pro-Individual, Pro-SME, Enterprise-Brand, Enterprise-Agency, or Custom tiers).

How to Connect

1. Navigate to Settings → Google integrations.
2. Find the Google Analytics 4 card and click Connect Google Analytics.
3. You'll be redirected to Google to authorize access. AEO Optima requests analytics.readonly and userinfo.email scopes.
4. After authorization, you'll be redirected back. Pick the GA4 property to track from the dropdown. AEO Optima suggests the best match for your project (scoring each property against your project's brand name and website, marked high/medium confidence) so the right one is pre-surfaced even when the Google account exposes hundreds of properties (agency accounts often do).
5. Click Save. The first sync runs immediately (you don't wait for the next daily cron) — the initial import covers the last 7 days. If you bound the wrong property, AEO Optima's binding diagnostics flag the mismatch.

Data Synced

From 20 November 2026, the share of all visits. For the property you chose, the daily sync also reads its daily totals of all visits by default channel group (organic search, direct, paid, referral, social and so on) and for the whole day: sessions, users, engaged sessions, key events and revenue — counts only, never anything about an individual visitor. They are used only to show what share of your site's visits come from AI assistants. They are read for days from 20 November 2026 onwards, never for earlier days, and kept 365 days, as the privacy policy says.

Sync Schedule

Data is synced daily at 6AM UTC via the aeo-optima-ga4-sync background job. GA4 data has a processing delay of approximately 24-48 hours, so the most recent data point is typically from 2 days ago.

From 23 October 2026:

• Sync Now runs the same sync as the daily job over the last 7 days: AI traffic with engaged sessions and conversions, the landing pages, and (from 20 November 2026) the channel totals.
• "Last synced" means the whole window landed. If any part fails to save, the time stays where it was and the next sync tries again.
• History. A new connection, a reconnect and a newly chosen property each start with a fill of history, done by the next daily sync. It goes back at least 90 days, or to where the earlier data stopped. Google keeps 14 months of Analytics data, so earlier months cannot be filled. Until the fill lands, the months before the last sync's 7 days read "Not synced", never 0.

When Google Access Stops

If Google stops accepting the connection (the account lost access, its password changed, or the authorisation was revoked or expired), the daily sync switches the connection off and records the day it stopped. From 23 October 2026 the project then says Google Analytics needs reconnecting to its owners and admins, at the top of the dashboard and in the alert bell, and by email at most once a week per organisation, until someone reconnects.

To fix it, open Settings → Google integrations and click Reconnect Google Analytics. A reconnect keeps the property you chose, so the sync resumes without picking it again. If the account can no longer see that property, the next sync clears it and asks you to pick it again.

A connection with no property chosen a day after connecting is flagged in the alert bell the same way, until a property is picked.

Choosing a different property. The stored data does not record which property it came from. So when a project switches to a different property, its data from the old property for the last 14 months is removed first, and the next sync fills that time from the new one. Older data stays as it was. If the switch cannot finish, it says so and nothing is lost: the old property stays chosen, and its months are filled again.

Disconnecting

To disconnect, go to Settings → Google integrations → Google Analytics 4 and click Disconnect. Your existing synced data stays until the end of its retention window — only new syncs stop. A disconnect is your own choice, so it raises no alert.

Troubleshooting