Survey and AI answers

Many people who hear about you from ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity type your address in or open a new tab. Their visit has no referrer, so it counts as Direct. Pathrail closes that gap four ways: tagged links, recovered visits, a one-question survey, and asking the assistants directly.

Tagged links

A link tagged with utm_source=chatgpt, ref=perplexity or another assistant's name counts as AI, the same as a referrer from that assistant. ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to its own links already. Use the same tags in links you place in GPTs, prompts and docs that assistants read.

Ask "How did you hear about us?"

Turn the question on in the AI page's Settings. Choose when it shows:

• On a page, like /welcome after signup (end with * for every page under a path).
• After an event, like signup, sent by the script.
• When your code asks:

pathrail("survey")

<button data-pathrail-survey>Tell us how you found us</button>

The widget is a separate small file, loaded only when the question is due. Each visitor is asked once; closing it counts as asked. The answer is stored as a survey_answer event on that visitor, with the choice and the channel it maps to. If the script is served from somewhere other than its default path, set data-survey-src on the script tag to where survey.js lives.

The AI page shows each answer next to the channel Pathrail measured for the same person, the share of people who said an AI assistant but arrived as Direct, and a survey-adjusted view that moves those people, and what they paid, to AI.

Recovered visits and confidence

With the crawler collector installed, a visit with no referrer that lands on a page an assistant fetched seconds earlier is counted as that assistant. Each one gets a confidence from 0 to 100, from how soon after the fetch it came, whether the bot was verified against its published IP ranges, and whether the device and browser fit. Visits under the threshold (50 by default) are listed but not counted.

Assistant answers

Add up to ten questions a buyer would ask. Every week Pathrail asks each assistant the server has a key for (ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude with web search; DeepSeek without) and records whether the answer names you, your place in its list, whether it links to your site, and who else it names. Run now asks again, at most once an hour.