Gemini Seems to Have Dropped UTM Tags From Cited Links

Search Engine Roundtable says Gemini seems to have stopped adding UTM tags to its cited links. Some of those visits may now show up as Direct traffic, so your numbers could mislead you.

Gemini began adding a utm_source=gemini tag to its cited links in early September. Then, around September 28, the tag stopped appearing.

What the chart shows

Natzir, who has been following the change, shared a chart of the tags. It showed them growing for three weeks before vanishing overnight.

John Mueller also said on Reddit that he’d seen the parameters on Gemini links about a month back.

On the web, the referrer still arrives. Natzir says visits with a gemini.google.com referrer stayed flat the whole time while the tags came and went.

Those tags were useful, because they let you pick Gemini out of a referral list. Does that mean Gemini has stopped sending you visitors?

That doesn’t follow from this evidence. The chart tracks the tags, not the visits themselves, and the web referrer didn’t move.

Where the iOS app breaks the trail

The iOS app is the complication. According to Natzir’s test, it opens links in its own WebView and sends no referrer, so the visit arrives without a source.

So a tap on a Gemini link in the app lands in GA4 as Direct rather than as Gemini.

The only trace Natzir found is a Gemini iOS user agent in your logs. In practice, you’ll need server logs to see those visits at all.

What’s still unconfirmed

Keep in mind that the iOS detail rests on one observer’s tests, and the report doesn’t include any statement from Google on the matter.

Why it matters

My read: don’t change your AI budget or content plan after one month of Gemini numbers.

I’d expect many site owners to see Gemini down in GA4 and call it a trend before they check anything else, which is an easy mistake to make.

Where do you look for the missing visits? Start with these three checks:

• Direct visits that land on articles answering the questions in your niche.
• Your server logs for the Gemini iOS user agent, if your host lets you.
• The same date range on every check, split at September 28.

Put a dated note in your reports, so you never read the drop without context. Anyone else reading your numbers should know when the change happened.

Is the gap big enough to matter for your business? Nobody has put a number on it yet.

What I can say is that a missing tag and a missing referrer are different problems. Track them separately, so one doesn’t hide the other.

Any AI referral number you trust was always partial. This change just makes that harder to ignore.

Common Questions

Has Google confirmed that Gemini stopped adding UTM tags?

The reporting here doesn’t say it has. The evidence comes from outside observers, and John Mueller’s Reddit comment only says he saw the tags a month ago.

Why would Gemini visits show up as Direct in Google Analytics?

One test found that the Gemini iOS app sends no referrer when a link opens in its built-in WebView. GA4 then files those visits as Direct, so no Gemini source shows up.

How do I check whether Gemini visits are hiding in Direct?

Compare Direct traffic on your article pages before and after September 28. On the server side, you can look for the iOS user agent if your host allows it. That’s the only trace the test found there.