Google is unlikely to ever label its AI traffic for you
Two SEOs say the fix would be easy, and that is exactly why they expect it never to arrive.
Visits from Google's AI answers arrive in your analytics with no label on them, and two well known SEOs do not expect that to change.
Gagan Ghotra posted that adding a tracking tag to the links inside AI Mode and AI Overviews would be simple to do. A tracking tag is a short label stuck on the end of a link that tells your analytics where a visitor came from. His suggestion was something like utm_source=ai-mode, or gemini, or ai-overviews, on the citation links Google shows in those AI answers. In his words it is "probably the easiest change that Google can do" and it would let site owners see exactly how much real traffic those AI surfaces send.
probably the easiest change that Google can do
Lily Ray replied with one line. "That's the entire reason they won't do it."
That鈥檚 the entire reason they won鈥檛 do it.
What this means for your numbers
Right now, when someone reads an AI Overview, clicks through to your page and buys something, you have no clean way to credit that visit to AI search. It lands in your reports mixed in with everything else from Google. So if you have been wondering whether all the talk about AI answers is costing you clicks or sending you new ones, your own analytics cannot tell you.
This is a view from two SEOs, not an announcement from Google. Google has not said anything about adding tags to AI citation links, and nobody outside Google knows whether it has ever considered it. Treat it as informed guessing about what Google is choosing not to measure in public.
It is worth contrasting with ChatGPT, which does tag its outbound links. When those tags briefly went missing, ChatGPT visits started landing in reports as direct traffic until the tags came back, as covered in an earlier story. That is the difference a label makes. One platform you can count, the other you cannot.
What to do
Nothing, for now. There is no setting to flip and no workaround here that these sources describe. Keep watching your overall Google traffic rather than trying to split out an AI share that Google does not hand you, and do not pay for a tool that claims to tell you exactly how many visits came from AI Overviews, because the data to do that cleanly is not being published.
If Google ever does start tagging these links, it will be obvious in your reports within days. Until then, assume the AI traffic is in there somewhere, unlabelled.
Be the person who already knew
One email a day. Under three minutes. You will hear about a Google change before it shows up in your traffic.