You can define the marketing channel and initial marketing channels properties in Heap by defining default properties available in two suggested chart templates (found in Charts > Chart templates). Review the instructions below to add these properties to your workspace.
Marketing Channel
To add the Marketing Channel property, open the chart template Which marketing channels are driving my conversions? Click the Use Heap Default button in the second question of the popup.
A pop-up will appear which will allow you to create the defined property Marketing Channel.
Initial Marketing Channel
To get the Initial Marketing Channel property, open the chart template Which marketing channels drive the most traffic? Click the Use Heap default button in the first question of the report.
A pop-up will appear which will allow you to create the defined property Initial Marketing Channel.
You can confirm that these properties have been added by looking them up on the Data > Properties page.
AI Chat channel
The AI Chat channel within the Marketing Channel property tracks traffic from AI-powered chat platforms and search assistants, showing how users discover your site through conversational AI.
Platforms tracked:
- ChatGPT (OpenAI)
- Claude (Anthropic)
- Perplexity
- Grok (X/Twitter)
- Poe
- You.com
- Phind
- Microsoft Copilot
- Google Gemini
- DeepSeek
- Mistral AI
Add the AI Chat channel condition
Depending on the age of your Heap account, AI Chat channel may not be part of your Marketing Channel property automatically.
To add it yourself, create either your Marketing Channel or Initial Marketing Channel property using the steps above. Then, you need to edit the property to add the AI condition.
Position the AI Chat channel before the Paid Search condition in your property configuration. This ensures AI-referred traffic is classified correctly before other conditions are evaluated.
Add the following filters to define the AI Chat channel. Use OR logic between all conditions (for Initial Marketing Channel, use the equivalent initial properties):
- referrer contains
chatgpt - utm_source contains
chatgpt - referrer contains
claude.ai - referrer contains
perplexity - referrer contains
grok.com - landing_page_query contains
referrer=grok.com - referrer contains
poe.com - referrer equals
you.com - referrer contains
interactive.phind.com - referrer contains
copilot.microsoft - referrer contains
gemini.google - referrer contains
deepseek - referrer contains
mistral.ai