Google Made It So You Can’t Track Clicks From AI Mode (Partially Fixed)

I was testing if the clicks would show in Google Search Console, but they aren't showing up. A post by Tom Critchlow on LinkedIn made me wonder how a click on a link in AI Mode would be recorded in analytics.

The tl;dr is that clicks to links in AI mode are not being recorded at all in Google Search Console, and they’re not sending a referrer value when you click. They’re treated as Unknown or Direct, depending on your analytics system.

Update May 31st: The noreferrer bug was fixed. This now records as Google / organic or Google / search. I tested this in GA4 and Ahrefs Analytics. The GSC issue still remains, but they updated the documentation to say “Note: AI Mode reporting isn't live in Search Console yet, but we expect this soon as part of the AI Mode rollout.”

Update May 27th: Google has said they're tracking the noreferrer issue as a bug + they updated the documentation to say “Note: AI Mode reporting isn't live in Search Console yet, but we expect this soon as part of the AI Mode rollout.”

That's a big problem if we don't have correct attribution. Does Google not want us to be able to track these?

Here’s the test, which I’ve repeated several times to ensure accuracy.

Pick a URL that doesn’t get any traffic on your site and paste it into AI mode. It will generate some info and a link to your URL which you can click.

After I clicked I checked Ahrefs Web Analytics for the page, which has real-time information, but you can check in Google Analytics or whatever analytics program you use.

As you can see below, this is classified as coming from an Unknown location. In other analytics systems like Google Analytics, this would show as Direct.

What’s going on?

The link itself is marked with noreferrer in the code of the page. You can verify this by using inspect in your browser. This means that the referrer value is stripped, leading it to be treated as unknown.

As I mentioned earlier, for the last couple days I’ve been testing a few pages to see if clicks to links in AI Mode will show in Google Search Console. The answer, unfortunately, is no.

Here’s one from yesterday where I searched “what are accelerated mobile pages from ahrefs?” and clicked. As you can see, I show no clicks in GSC.

Looking at the code, I see the normal tracking info that indicates where and how a link is displayed and the ping which I believe sends it over to Google's tracking systems.

Even though the link was tagged, the data doesn’t seem to be in Google Search Console. This could indicate that AI Mode tracking is coming soon though, possibly as a separate classification.

Final Thoughts

Attribution is important, and we don't have it yet. It makes me suspicious that there's something Google doesn't want us to know about this traffic. Is it that bad for website owners that they won't even show it to us?

I’m hoping Google will remove the noreferrer tag from these links so they’re recorded properly in analytics systems, and I’m also hopeful that we will get data for AI Mode. For now, be aware that this data is missing in GSC and incorrectly classified in analytics.

Post byPatrick Stox

Patrick Stox is an independent SEO consultant. Former Product Advisor, Technical SEO, and Brand Ambassador at Ahrefs. Before that he was a Technical SEO at IBM for many years, worked at an agency, had his own consultancy, and was in-house at a B2B company. A long time ago he started his career as a developer.

He’s an organizer for the Triangle SEO Meetup, the Tech SEO Connect conference, he runs a Technical SEO Slack group, and is a moderator for /r/TechSEO on Reddit.

Patrick was the lead author for the SEO chapter of the 2021 Web Almanac and reviewer for the 2022 chapter. He helped define the role of Search Marketing Strategist for the US Department of Labor. He also co-wrote the SEO Book For Beginners by Ahrefs and was the Technical Review Editor for The Art of SEO 4th Edition.

He’s spoken at 100+ industry events including Pubcon, SMX, Tech SEO Boost, Ad World, Digital Summit, and many more. He’s written 100+ articles for industry sites like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, MarTech, and right here at Ahrefs. He was a finalist for SEO Speaker of the Year and SEO Contributor of the Year at the 2018 Search Engine Land Awards. He was also an EzineArticles Platinum author back in the day and still has the mug to prove it.

Patrick has judged nearly a dozen search awards for multiple years including the US Search Awards, UK Search Awards, and Interactive Marketing Awards. He participated in and documented the world’s largest SEO contest to date, the Wix SEO Hero contest which he arguably should have won.

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