Google Gemini Adds UTM Parameters For Referral Attribution via @sejournal, @martinibuster
All Paid Media PPC News Social MediaAdvertising Video Advertising Columns Ask A PPC ExpertNEW PPC Pulse Guide Your ChatGPT Calls Are Hiding in the 'Direct/Other' Bucket Calls from ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity land in 'direct/other.' This checklist shows six steps to track them as their own source. Digital Marketing All Digital Marketing Analytics & Data Ecommerce Lead Generation Content Marketing Social Platforms Google YouTube Reddit LinkedIn TikTokNEW WordPress Other CMS Platforms Webinar Fix The Product Pages AI Shopping Agents Skip In this webinar, learn to rewrite spec-sheet product copy into the words shoppers use, and make product pages readable to AI. SEJ Live Webinars Rundowns PodcastNEW Ebooks All Resources Webinar Fix The Product Pages AI Shopping Agents Skip In this webinar, learn to rewrite spec-sheet product copy into the words shoppers use, and make product pages readable to AI. SEJ ⋅ SEO Google Gemini Adds UTM Parameters For Referral Attribution Google Gemini added UTM parameters to links, giving SEOs better numbers for measuring AI traffic and deciding where resources should go. SEJ STAFF Roger Montti October 1, 2026 ⋅ 3 min read SEJ STAFF Roger Montti Owner - Martinibuster.com at Martinibuster.com Bio Follow 5.5K READS Google quietly added UTM parameters to outgoing links so that site owners and SEO will be able to more accurately attribute referrals from Gemini. The move comes amid increasing frustration at Google for collapsing the amount of traffic sent by Search because of AI Search and Gemini. Traffic from AI chatbots like Gemini can show up as “direct” in analytics packages like GA4. Direct is the fallback used when there is no referrer or UTM data to explicitly tie a visit to a referrer. Someone on Reddit started a discussion about discovering that Gemini is adding UTMs. “Google Gemini add UTM to results! Gemini Start using UTM ! finally , its very new 24hours or so Like chatgpt UTM” “Nice. I see it too. Doesn’t Gemini have a referrer too though? I thought you could already track them.” “There is a referrer, but it mostly survives on desktop web only, reported pass through from the Gemini mobile app runs around 9 percent and Android assistant invocations strip it entirely, so a large share of that traffic has been landing in Direct instead of GA4’s ai assistant medium. A UTM survives the in app webview and shows up in raw server logs too, which is why this matters more than it looks even though the referrer technically already existed.” “If someone has more information on what happens with the referrer (ideally with something I can reproduce), I’m happy to forward that to the team. It would be great to have these retained (in addition to the UTM-tagging).” The addition of a UTM parameter to outgoing links from Gemini benefits SEOs and site owners because they can now more accurately track how much traffic the Gemini platform is sending, no more guessing. Better referral attribution also enables the ability to segment and compare AI-referred site visitors in order to more accurately compare referrals across more AI referrers as well as against traditional search. Attribution enables smarter decisions. With better referral attribution it becomes easier to justify resource allocation to AI channels with real numbers. ChatGPT adds UTM parameters to outgoing links but only to links that are in the context of answers that are grounded from web sources, not from information that comes from training data (parametric knowledge). At this point, Google’s implementation of the UTM parameter is undocumented so it’s unknown under what circumstances UTMs are triggered within Google Gemini. Presumably they may be triggered when Gemini presents answers in a format that directly references a website, but we don’t know for sure until Google documents this new behavior. Add SEJ as a preferred source on Google Read Full Bio SEJ STAFF Roger Montti Owner - Martinibuster.com at Martinibuster.com I have 25 years hands-on experience in SEO, evolving along with the search engines by keeping up with the latest ... Breaking news and insights to help you lead search strategies. Google's Gemini Decoded: Unveiling The Impact On SEO Looking Ahead To The Future – SGE, Gemini…And AGI? Simplifying Google Updates And Communications For C-Level Stakeholders The AI Search & SEO News That Matters Breaking news and insights to help you lead search strategies. Breaking news and insights to help you lead search strategies. In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses -- and careers.
Source: Search Engine Journal
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