Want a simple GEO hack? Find out which of your website pages are feeding ChatGPT conversations, and use those pages to showcase your brand and feed the very top of the funnel. This information is not available in Google Analytics or Google Search Console — it only appears in your web server logs. Analytics Edge automation makes it possible to process your website log files, extracting the pages viewed by the ChatGPT-User agent and allows you to track them over time.
No-Code Automation
When a ChatGPT user asks a question and the AI server checks your website for content, it logs a page hit from the User Agent of ‘ChatGPT-User’. This page hit does not trigger a page view in Google Analytics, and Google Search is not involved, so those classic data sources are of no use. Your website server logs contain the data, but you need to dig it out of the files.
The Analytics Edge Add-in for Excel (or Desktop App) makes the process easy with wizard-based functions and command-line capabilities. Download your daily web server logs, then grab a listing of the log files available (using ‘dir’ in a cmd.exe process on Windows to get a directory listing).
Then a repeat macro can cycle through the file names, reading the text files and parsing the common log format into columns.
The web page is in a column that includes the http method and version, but a simple split function can be used to extract the page portion.
Track ChatGPT-User Over Time
The date/time and page columns can then be appended to a worksheet for summary reporting; this combines the selected rows from all of the files into a single listing. A summarizing macro can then pivot the results and sort/filter for reporting.
With Analytics Edge automation, a simple click to the Refresh All button runs all the queries and macros in the workbook, giving you an updated report in seconds.
Now you can see what pages are being used to answer ChatGPT prompts, and how that usage has changed over time. While this information is often considered ‘informational’, marketers would consider it to be the very top of the funnel. You should ensure that your brand is prominent and positively portrayed in the content. Tweak the content, then watch for any change in usage to make sure you didn’t trigger a drop.