Google released AI Mode in the U.S. a couple of days ago and Tom Critchlow and Patrick Stox noticed that Google prevented you from tracking referrer data from AI Mode. Well, that turned out to be unintentional and Google said it is a bug and it will be fixed.
John Mueller from Google posted on LinkedIn deep in the comments of a post from Alyeda Solis saying, "it's being tracked as a bug." He said this was "unexpected," and it is a confirmed bug that Google will address and fix.
He also wrote on Reddit, "We're currently considering this a bug, so I'd expect it to be fixed. Sorry for the detour."
What was the issue? The AI Mode links were marked with noreferrer elements in the code. "This means that the referrer value is stripped, leading it to be treated as unknown," Patrick wrote. He added, "this is classified as coming from an Unknown location. In other analytics systems like Google Analytics, this would show as Direct." Tom wrote, "I'm right in saying that clicks from AI Mode today show up as direct traffic right? Not just Google, they completely strip the referrer."
Here is a screenshot of the code:
This should be fixed soon, hopefully by the time you read this.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
Update: May 28th it was "fixed."
Google AI Mode "fixed" the noreferrer "bug" - so now you can track it better https://t.co/6GOnP4lVxX thanks @tomcritchlow and @patrickstox pic.twitter.com/1ULLomBPcX
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) May 28, 2025
