As of early October 2026, Google has quietly started appending UTM parameters to outgoing links in Gemini. SEOs and site owners can now see AI-generated referral traffic that previously disappeared into the Direct bucket in GA4.
The move, spotted first on Reddit, addresses a long-running analytics blind spot: traffic from AI chatbots often shows up as Direct because there is no referrer or UTM to tie it to the source.
Why the change matters
When an AI chatbot sends a visitor to your site without a referrer or UTM, analytics tools treat the session as Direct. It looks like someone typed your URL by hand. That has made Gemini one of the most invisible traffic sources on the web.
Gemini did already expose a referrer, but Reddit users reporting the change say it mostly survives on desktop. On the Gemini mobile app, reported referrer pass-through is around 9 percent. When Android Assistant invokes Gemini, the referrer is stripped entirely. A UTM behaves differently: it survives the in-app webview and shows up in raw server logs, not just browser-based analytics.
Google’s John Mueller confirmed the rollout. “Nice. I see it too,” he replied, before asking whether Gemini already had referrer tracking. He added that retaining referrers alongside UTM tags would be ideal.
Before this, a marketer looking at GA4 might see a bump in Direct and have no way to know it came from Gemini. That made AI an invisible variable rather than an accountable channel.
What this unlocks for performance teams
This is not just an analytics housekeeping update. Cleaner attribution gives marketers the ability to compare Gemini referrals against ChatGPT, traditional search and other sources on like-for-like terms. That leads directly to better decisions:
- Segment AI-referred visitors in GA4 instead of losing them in Direct.
- Benchmark engagement and conversion rates for Gemini versus Google organic.
- Apply real revenue data to AI channel investment rather than guesswork.
The timing matters. Marketers have spent months worrying that AI Search and Gemini are eating organic clicks. UTM attribution does not restore those clicks, but it makes the remaining AI referral stream measurable and defensible. For D2C founders and growth teams, that is the difference between anecdote and evidence.
Still to watch
Google has not documented when Gemini triggers these UTMs. ChatGPT, for comparison, only tags links when an answer is grounded in web sources, not when it pulls from training data. The working assumption is that Gemini will do something similar when it directly references a website, but that is not confirmed.
Until the rules are clear, create an AI attribution segment now. Monitor source/medium values and raw server logs for Gemini-tagged visits, and validate what you see over the next few weeks. Early clean data is more valuable than waiting for official documentation.
Source: Search Engine Journal
