AI Is Showing Up in Your Analytics. Now What?

AI is changing how renters search for apartments—but can you actually see that impact in your marketing reports?

In this episode of The Multifamily Marketers Podcast, hosts Josh Grillo and Caroline Mills explore how traffic from AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini is beginning to show up in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)—giving multifamily marketers a new way to measure how AI is influencing apartment discovery.

From identifying AI referral traffic to analyzing engagement, tracking conversions, and understanding attribution limitations, Josh and Caroline break down what marketers should be looking for in their analytics. More importantly, they explain how to turn those insights into smarter website decisions, better reporting, and a clearer understanding of AI’s growing role in the renter journey.

You’ll learn:

• How traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI platforms can appear in Google Analytics 4
• Where to look in GA4 to identify AI referral sources beyond traditional organic search reports
• The four key metrics to evaluate: traffic trends, engagement, conversions, and traffic quality
• Why AI referral traffic doesn’t tell the complete story of how renters discover your community
• How to use AI traffic insights to improve your website experience, content, and search visibility
• Why accurate tracking and properly configured conversion events are essential for meaningful reporting
• How to communicate AI performance to owners and asset managers without overwhelming them with more metrics

To suggest a topic, get in touch!

For more multifamily marketing help, connect with us at Resident360.

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TRANSCRIPT

Episode 60: AI Is Showing Up in Your Analytics. Now What?

Podcast Co-Hosts: Josh Grillo and Caroline Mills, Resident360

Josh: Hey, Caroline. Good morning. How are you?

Caroline: Hello! Doing great here in sunshiny Florida. We’re actually getting a little fall this week.

Josh: Oh, are the leaves changing?

Caroline: No leaves changing.

Josh: Palm tree leaves changing color?

Caroline: Yeah. I’d say it was a crisp 60 degrees this morning, so that’s pretty fall for us.

Josh: Oh, yeah. It’s finally cold here in San Diego after coming out of a massive heat wave.

Caroline: I was going to say, you guys were hot for so long.

Josh: It feels like it’s been an eternity. And the water’s still warm. The ocean is 70 degrees right now, which is insanely warm for this time of year.

Caroline: For you, that is.

Josh: Yeah. So what are we talking about today? We’re jumping into AI, but this time it’s a little different. Caroline, you told me AI is now showing up in analytics reports.

Caroline: Yeah, this is pretty exciting. It’s something we’ve been watching very closely for the past six to eight months: whether our GA4, our Google Analytics data, can tell us if people are actually coming from these AI platforms. I think that’s the big thing everyone’s focused on. Okay, I’m optimizing my site, but is it actually working? Am I actually getting prospects and residents? Now we’re seeing it pay off, and these platforms are starting to appear in referral traffic.

Josh: I was going to say, I was looking at resident360.com’s Google Analytics report, and I was finally seeing referrals from ChatGPT. I couldn’t believe it. I think I had about 25, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, we must be showing up there.”

Caroline: Yes, I think that’s the important part. Everyone understands why they need to optimize their sites now, but the question is whether it’s actually paying off. Now we’re able to back that up and see it paying off.

Josh: All right, let’s break it down. This whole show today is about what AI traffic looks like in GA4, Google Analytics. We’ve already done a number of shows on how to optimize your site for AI and how to show up on these different platforms. So today we’re switching gears and talking about what to look for in our reporting.

So here’s the first question, Caroline. When we talk about AI search, we’re talking about tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI-powered search experiences. For a marketer logged into GA4, what does this traffic actually look like? Can we see someone who visits our website from an AI tool? Does it actually show that?

Caroline: Yes. In many cases we can, particularly when someone clicks a link in an AI tool and lands directly on the property’s website. For example, someone might ask ChatGPT to recommend luxury apartments in Orlando, Florida. They’ll get a list of communities, click through to one of the websites, and start exploring floor plans, availability, whatever it may be. That visit can absolutely show up in GA4 with a referral source tied to the AI platform. So if they were in ChatGPT, we’ll see ChatGPT.

The interesting piece is that ChatGPT was the earliest one we saw in GA4, up until a couple of months ago. Now we’re also starting to see Perplexity, Gemini, and, like you said, Google’s AI-powered search show up as referral traffic. So depending on the platform and how it’s tracked, we’re seeing these sources start to come in.

I think the important thing to understand is that this doesn’t always appear in one clean, standard place. There isn’t just an “AI” category. It might be classified as referral traffic, and the exact source and channel can vary depending on how GA4 attributes it. That’s why we look beyond the default channel groups and dig into the sources and referral details. We want to understand whether these AI platforms are becoming a meaningful source of website traffic.

Josh: Makes sense. So if an owner opens their GA4 report and only looks at organic search, they could be missing part of the picture.

Caroline: Exactly. And we do have to recognize some limitations here. Not every AI-assisted search produces a measurable referral. Someone could discover a community through AI, later search for the property by name, and then visit through another channel. So the referral data gives us useful signals, but it doesn’t capture the full influence AI has on the customer journey. We talk about this a lot with social media, geofencing, and other broader-reach traffic, too.

Josh: All right, let’s say I’m a marketing manager, and I want to understand whether AI is making a difference for my property. I open GA4. What should I look at beyond simply counting visits?

Caroline: That’s a good question. I’d start with four main things. First, traffic volume and trends. Are you seeing AI-referred sessions at all? Are they growing month over month? Are new platforms starting to send traffic? That’s where I’d start.

Second is engagement. Are people actually exploring the website? Are they viewing multiple pages, checking floor plans or availability, or moving beyond the landing page at all?

Third, and this is one of the most important ones we always talk about, is conversion behavior. They’re visiting and going to these pages, but are they taking meaningful actions, like clicking to schedule a tour, starting an application, or submitting a form? The exact actions depend on what the property measures correctly, but are visitors completing them when they get there?

Fourth is the quality of that traffic. This is going to be new across the board, but we need to understand whether AI-referred visitors are showing signs of intent, not just whether the traffic number is increasing. For example, 100 visits that lead to meaningful leasing interactions can be more valuable than 1,000 visits where nobody engages.

I’d also compare AI-referred traffic with your other sources, such as organic search, like you said, and paid search and direct traffic, while remembering that the audiences and attribution methods aren’t identical. That’s just something to keep in mind as we see this grow.

Josh: So the goal isn’t just to prove that AI sent someone to your website. It’s to figure out what happened after they got there.

Caroline: Exactly. Traffic is the starting point, but your business outcomes, your leasing outcomes, are what make the data useful.

Josh: Okay, so why should multifamily marketers even care? Some people might hear this and think, “Okay, that’s interesting, but we already have Google, paid search, ILSs, and other marketing channels to manage. Why does AI referral traffic deserve our attention now?”

Caroline: I feel like you just pulled that quote from a client call in the past few weeks. We’re definitely getting questions about that. The reason is that the way renters discover communities is evolving, so marketers need to understand where that discovery is actually happening.

Historically, we focused heavily on rankings and traditional search results, visibility on apartment listing sites, and, of course, paid campaigns. Those channels absolutely still matter. But now a prospective renter might ask an AI tool to compare neighborhoods, identify communities with certain amenities, or narrow down options before ever visiting Google or an ILS. If AI tools are influencing that discovery process, we need to understand whether they’re also sending visitors to our website, and whether those visitors are engaging.

There’s also a strategic benefit. The data can help us identify opportunities. If a community is receiving AI-referred traffic from ChatGPT or Gemini, and those visitors are engaging with floor plans and availability, that’s worth investigating to see what we need more of. On the other hand, if we’re seeing very little AI referral traffic, it doesn’t automatically mean the property isn’t appearing. It may mean people aren’t clicking through, the platform isn’t passing along referral information, or the volume is still too small to measure reliably. So we shouldn’t make assumptions about any channel. We should measure what we can, understand what we can’t, and use that alongside the other marketing insights we’re already using.

Josh: Okay, let’s get practical. We’ve identified AI traffic in GA4, and we’ve looked at engagement and conversions. What do we actually do with that information?

Caroline: Okay. You’ve logged in, you’ve taken a look, you understand what’s in there, and you see how much time they’re spending on the site. First, make sure the data is reliable. We want consistent GA4 tracking, properly configured conversion events, and a way to identify AI referral sources. Depending on your reporting setup, that might involve a custom channel, some custom tracking, or a reporting view that brings these together. You also want to filter out any bot or international traffic that may just be low-quality data for you.

Second, connect it to the website experience. We talk about this a lot when people are spending time on websites. Are they landing on the right pages? Are their questions being answered on the site? Is the floor plan and pricing information easy to understand and easy to find? If the traffic is relevant but people aren’t taking the next step, the website experience might be part of the issue.

Third, use these findings to inform your broader search and content strategy. We want accurate, useful, well-structured website content that answers real questions and includes property information, amenity descriptions, everything we look for in a great website. And we want that content to be accessible, so search engines and AI systems can interpret it.

But there’s one distinction we do want to make. GA4 tells us what happens on the website after a measurable visit. It doesn’t tell us every AI answer where a property appears, or exactly how an AI system decides to recommend it. We still need other methods to evaluate that visibility.

Josh: So realistically, GA4 is one piece of the picture, but not the entire AI visibility strategy.

Caroline: Exactly. Here at Resident360, we combine website analytics with AI visibility monitoring, traditional SEO data, and search performance, and ultimately with leasing outcomes, wherever we can connect them to these signals, to tell us what’s working.

Josh: All right, let’s talk reporting for a second. If you’re presenting performance to an owner or an asset manager, how do you explain this without overwhelming them with another set of digital marketing metrics?

Caroline: That’s very valid, and I would keep it simple with three basic questions. One: Are we seeing measurable traffic from these platforms? Show the trends and identify the sources if possible. Two: Are those visitors engaging with the property website? Highlight meaningful actions and relevant conversion events, not just the number of views. Three: What are we doing with what we’ve learned? It’s great to show that they’re coming to the site, or that they’re not, but what are we learning from it? That’s the most important part. Explain whether we’re improving tracking, addressing website content gaps, monitoring visibility, or investigating opportunities to improve the renter experience.

We want to be careful not to overstate results right now. If the sample size is small, just say that this is new and we’re still learning to understand it as an industry. We can see referrals, but we can’t connect them to leases. There’s no tracking for that at this time, so we don’t want to claim that AI specifically generated any leases. For multifamily, I’d say the ultimate goal isn’t to win an AI traffic report. It’s to help prospective residents discover the right community, make it easier for them to take the next step in leasing, and boost visibility for your website overall.

Josh: Okay, so for marketers listening today, what’s one action they should take after this episode?

Caroline: The easiest thing is to open GA4 and look at your referral traffic. Check whether you can identify visits from these AI platforms, which ones you’re getting traffic from, and how many. Review how that traffic has trended, whether it’s going up or down, and see whether those visitors are engaging with your website and completing any of your conversion events.

If you don’t see AI traffic, don’t panic. Check your tracking and your reporting setup, and remember that referral traffic only captures part of the story, like we said. The goal is to establish a baseline now so you can monitor changes over time, rather than waiting until AI becomes a bigger conversation with ownership, your leadership team, your asset managers, whoever it may be.

Josh: Love that, because it really comes down to understanding the data instead of chasing another marketing buzzword. You’ve got to look at your data to see it, right, Caroline?

Caroline: Absolutely.

Josh: All right, that’ll be a wrap for this episode. Thanks to everybody for listening to the Multifamily Marketers Podcast. We’ll be back next week with another episode. Take care, Caroline. Good to see you.

Caroline: Thanks, guys. Bye!