Distinguishing AI-Sponsored Links from Organic Search Traffic

Question

Hello everyone,I'm coming to this forum with a quick question. Is there a way to natively identify users coming from Google via an AI Overview link? I notice that the default referrer for these visitors is Google, so they are categorized under natural search, which is not optimal. Since these links are sponsored by AI, is there a way to distinguish them from true organic traffic?Thank you.

Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted Answer

Unfortunately, these links aren't being passed through an ad server, or appending any sort of campaign code that would allow any sort of identification....

Traditional "sponsored links" in Google, have google as the referrer, but have the gclid, etc campaigns being appended by the Google Ad logic... This (and other paid campaign inclusion) is how "paid search" is distinguished from organic...

Unless Google decides to append special campaigns to help identify and distinguish these links, I think we are all out of luck (and at the mercy of what Google decides)....

Vinay_Chauhan · Answer

Agree with @jennifer_dungan

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable way to natively distinguish AI Overview traffic from standard organic in Adobe Analytics right now.

These links typically come through with a 'google.com' referrer, and without any unique query parameters or campaign codes (like 'gclid') to help identify them separately. Since they don’t go through Google Ads infrastructure, they bypass the mechanisms we’d normally use to split paid vs. organic traffic.

Unless Google starts tagging AI Overview links in some consistent way, we’re pretty limited. For now, they’ll keep getting lumped into Natural Search — unless you explore some kind of referrer pattern analysis, but even that’s pretty hit-or-miss.

Would love to hear if anyone’s found a workaround.

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