Assessing AI Summary Traffic

This exact question came up a few weeks ago, and for reference to people here, the question specifically mentioned "AI Summary from Search Engines", so there will absolutely be a Referrer (i.e. Google or Bing) and it is not "bot traffic", it is users clicking on the sources that are cited by the Search Engine to drive their answer:

Unfortunately, neither Google nor Bing are not applying any sort of query parameter onto these links, they are completely indistinguishable from other Organic Search links....

Unlike the sponsored and paid links that surface near the top of Search Engines, which all have query string parameters as part of the link so that they can be distinguished as "Paid" Search, Google and Bing (and likely other Search Engines)...  have not yet decided to give visibility into the links from the AI Summaries... 

At this moment, this is a black box... and unless these Search Engines decide to add parameters onto the links, there is nothing we can do at this time.

Hi @marissazu ,

Right now, there's no direct dimension in Adobe Analytics to track AI Summary traffic, but you can infer it using:

• Entry Page + No Referrer

• Referring Domain patterns

• Session anomalies

• Custom URL tagging (proactive)

If you're managing SEO, it's also worth keeping an eye on Search Console performance (impressions with low clicks) for signs of AI summarization without clicks.

In Google analytics, it is possible using session source data. 

In your case (tracking traffic from AI Summaries), try:

1. Create a segment where:

   • Marketing Channel = Natural Search

   • Marketing Channel Detail = google / organic

   • AND/OR

   • Referring Domain contains "google.com"

   • AND

   • Entry Page is your key content page

   • AND

   • Referrer does NOT contain /search? (this can filter out classic Google Search if needed)

Look for:

• Traffic with no campaign tracking

• High direct/typed/bookmarked sessions with unusual patterns

• Sessions where the first hit has no referrer but lands deep in content

Thanks.

Pradnya

Tracking traffic from AI sources is a huge topic right now. I haven't personally worked on trying to identify this traffic, but there is a blog post by the excellent @ericmatisoff that talks about AI traffic. There might be something in there that can help you out. 

https://main--rockstar--ericmatisoff.aem.live/identifying-traffic-from-generative-ai-llms 

@marissazu not something I have figured how to myself. However, there are some useful replies to similar question responded to here

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-analytics-questions/how-to-track-chat-gpt-bard-and-all-these-ai-searches/m-p/655344 

https://omisido.com/how-to-track-ai-traffic-in-ga4/