Short answer
Google has quietly added UTM parameters to the outbound links Gemini shows in its answers. Visits from the AI chatbot can therefore appear as a separate source in analytics tools instead of disappearing into direct traffic. The behaviour is not yet documented and it is unclear when it applies, so you need to verify your reports against your own data.
Highlights
- Google has added UTM parameters to Gemini's outbound links; ChatGPT's links already follow a similar practice.
- Without this tag, Gemini-sourced visits can show up as 'direct' traffic in tools such as GA4.
- Google has not documented the behaviour, and the conditions under which it applies are unknown.
2 min readEditor-in-chief: Uğur Deniz İlhan
According to Search Engine Journal, Google has started adding UTM parameters to Gemini's outbound links. A UTM is a tag appended to a link that tells analytics tools which source a visit came from. The change was not announced; it surfaced when a Reddit user noticed it.
Why does this change matter?
When visits from AI chatbots carry neither a referrer nor a UTM tag, packages such as GA4 count them as 'direct' traffic. In the discussion quoted in the report, Google's John Mueller said he saw the tag too; he thought Gemini already carried a referrer, but a user argued that it is largely lost in the mobile app and in the Android assistant. Mueller wrote that he was happy to pass a reproducible example to the team.
What questions remain open?
The report says ChatGPT also adds UTM parameters to outbound links, but only to links in answers grounded in web sources, not to information drawn from the model's training data. Because Google's implementation is undocumented, it is unclear when the tag is added, what the source value is and whether it will stay.
What should marketing teams do?
Being able to see AI-referred traffic separately is a concrete gain for teams that have had to explain the 'direct' line in budget meetings. Because the tag is undocumented, though, the results call for caution:
- Scan the UTM source values in GA4 and your server logs and track the ones belonging to Gemini as a separate segment; Google has not documented the name, so verify it in your own data.
- Read recent shifts in direct traffic alongside the date the tag began to appear, and note that gap when comparing with earlier periods.
- Report conversions from ChatGPT, Gemini and classic search side by side, and discuss channel budgets once that data has settled.
Frequently asked
- How does Gemini traffic appear in analytics tools?
- Visits from tagged links can be read by their UTM source value. Because Google has not documented the values, you need to verify the name you see in your own reports.
Sources
- Search Engine Journal ·
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