Short answer: neither in isolation. GA4's native channel is called AI Assistant (singular), landed on 13 May 2026, and classifies purely by referrer. Google's own two help pages name different source lists and never publish the full one. A custom channel group applies retroactively; the native channel is not documented to. Reconcile the two, report the wider figure, and treat every number as a flo
What this covers
- What Google actually documents, as at 26 August 2026
- The backfill question, where most reconciliations break
- Why the two numbers diverge
- 1. Source-list mismatch
- 2. Channel ordering
This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *GA4's AI Assistant Channel vs Your Own Channel Group: Which AI-Referral Number Should You Trust?*.
Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.
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