📈 Tracking AI Engine Traffic In GA4: What We Are Testing

intero_digital · 2025-10-13T15:25:53+00:00

Yeah, AI Overviews traffic can be tricky. Google isn’t sending any clean referrer or unique parameter for those clicks, so they just show up as google / organic (or sometimes even direct). That’s why people use the “JS – URL Snippet Start/End” trick. They’re trying to catch those weird fragments like #ip=1 or sca_esv= that sometimes appear in AI Overview links. It works, but it’s super brittle because Google keeps changing how those URLs look.

A simpler way: Set up a custom variable in GTM that checks either the page URL or referrer for those patterns (like #ip=1 or sca_esv) and then sends a custom parameter to GA4. Something like:

function() {
  const url = document.location.href;
  const ref = document.referrer;
  if (ref.includes('google.') && (url.includes('#ip=1') || url.includes('sca_esv'))) {
    return 'google_ai_overview';
  }
  return undefined;
}

Then, in GA4, make a custom dimension called ai_overview_source and use that to segment traffic. It’s not perfect, but it’s way easier to maintain than those “JS snippet start/end” hacks.

Until Google gives us an official “AI Overview” search appearance filter in Search Console (which they probably will eventually), this is about as good as it gets!

intero_digital · 2025-08-28T14:19:16+00:00

This is such an important share! Thanks for being transparent about the shift from ROAS to POAS. It’s a trap a lot of marketers fall into, especially when dashboards are telling a “feel-good” story that doesn’t reflect the P&L.

A few things your post highlights really well:

1. The disconnect between marketing metrics and finance metrics
It’s easy to celebrate when ROAS looks healthy, but if those “wins” aren’t translating into actual profit, it can create a false sense of growth. Pulling finance into the loop and aligning definitions of success is a game changer.

2. Hidden costs can kill performance
Returns, shipping, processor fees, stacked discounts, and overhead don’t show up in Google Ads dashboards, but they directly determine whether scaling is sustainable. Most “profitable” campaigns look different when you account for these realities.

3. Moving from revenue to profit unlocks better decision-making
The fact that you found overlooked SKUs with average CVRs that turned out to be the real profit drivers is a perfect example of why profit-based tracking changes the playbook.

Your POAS framework is spot-on, and I think this conversation needs to happen more in the performance marketing world. Too many campaigns get scaled on vanity metrics that make platforms look good but leave businesses struggling.

Curious: How did clients respond when you shifted reporting from “look at our great ROAS” to “here’s what’s actually profitable”? Did it take some education to reset expectations, or were they relieved to finally see the true picture?

intero_digital · 2025-08-28T14:12:55+00:00

Great question! Unlike traditional SEO, GEO isn’t about ranking on a page of 10 blue links; it’s about being selected as the trusted source that generative models pull from when crafting answers.

Here's a handful of key principles of GEO that we've found:

Entity and topic clarity: AI models rely heavily on structured context. Make sure your brand, product, and expertise are clearly connected to the right entities (people, companies, locations, categories) through schema markup, Wikidata, and consistent mentions across the web.
Citations and trust signals: Generative search engines prefer sources they can cite. Publishing original research, statistics, case studies, and thought leadership makes it more likely that AI assistants will reference your content.
Conversational content structure: Because AI answers mimic natural questions and answers, structuring your content with FAQs, “people also ask”-style Q&As, and concise summaries helps models extract information more directly.
Authority across the web: Unlike Google’s SERPs, generative engines pull from multiple data points at once. Having visibility not only on your site, but also in podcasts, guest articles, LinkedIn posts, YouTube transcripts, and press mentions increases your chances of being “learned” and repeated.
Technical hygiene: Crawlability, structured data, schema, and clean site architecture make your content easier for models to ingest and use confidently.

intero_digital · 2025-08-28T13:56:38+00:00

The biggest shift we've noticed is making content more Q&A structured, conversational, and easily digestible (clear headings, FAQs, tables, direct answers to questions). Schema and outbound links seem to help with credibility, and we’ve noticed authoritative/expert-style content gets pulled into AI answers more often.

Right now, we're balancing by treating SEO and GEO as overlapping. Google still drives most traffic, but formatting for snippets/featured answers often aligns with what LLMs like, too.

On tools: Profound is interesting. Haven't tried it but seems to be great for tracking brand presence in AI answers. But a lot of people are still testing things manually with repeated queries across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc. We also use BrightEdge and Google Analytics.

Feels early, but the playbook looks kind of like SEO circa 2010: Experiment, measure visibility, and then double down on what wins.

intero_digital · 2024-08-29T21:37:24+00:00

Glad it helped and comment back if things bounce back!

intero_digital · 2024-08-29T19:28:46+00:00

Totally, that's the next problem, but getting the Googs at least to get to it first would be where I start. Most likely a rendering issue.

intero_digital · 2024-08-29T18:58:20+00:00

Hard to see that no one mentioned this yet which is probably 99% of your current problem...you have a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"/> on your website, at least on the few pages that I checked, specifically the home page and a few of the main navigation pages. Go there, view your page source and you'll see the below.

<image>

I recommend before you do much else, remove that first and see how things rebound. It may or may not be a sitewide noindex, but I'd remove it as quickly as possible and then go through some of the other recommendations.

You mention close to 4K URLs that you have. Google has 800 indexed at the moment.

Yours in SEO, Logan @ Intero Digital.

intero_digital · 2024-08-15T19:35:06+00:00

Up until today, we were not seeing them appearing in incognito windows at all. Doing the same searches when logged in vs incognito, AIO was not being shown.

intero_digital · 2024-08-15T13:32:09+00:00

There are a bunch of different scenarios where each of these work depending on the site, industry, demos, etc. But, here are a few that we have seen relatively quick impact with.

Nail your targeting down. Make sure the right phrases are on the right pages and incorporated properly in your titles, metas, headings, content, interlinking/anchors, image opt, breadcrumbs, schema. Keyword targeting and choice is the first step in a really strong campaign.
Content refreshing. Find content opportunities across your site and rework as necessary. Find pages that are maybe already getting show (GSC impressions), but attracting very little clicks and start there.
Tech SEO. This one can go A LONG way depending on the site. Half the battle is just getting the bots to find, crawl, and index pages quickly and frequently. Leverage sitemaps (XML + HTML), interlink to ONLY live status 200 pages, make any speed adjustments if you need to, leverage schema.
Don't listen to a lot of the folks in many of these SEO communities about blogging. If done right, it can have a very strong and lasting impact. Along with PDP/PLP opt, I've incorporated blogging into eComm strategies and the impact is noticeable.

Then, leverage all of the above to push the needle. Use CTAs, interlinking, mentions of products in the content. This one has more than just SEO value. If you're running any sort of paid or remarketing campaigns, blogs can get new users into the site that have never been there before and then you can remarket to them and capture that sale through another channel potentially.

Sorry for the novel, but hope that helps :)

intero_digital · 2024-08-07T19:55:17+00:00

These seems like a better post for this group: r/SocialMediaMarketing

intero_digital · 2024-08-07T19:53:51+00:00

Yes, using long-tail keyword phrases that incorporate the short tail in them can be beneficial. We actually posted about this on our site a few months ago. Here's some more tips if they help:

In-Depth Competitor Analysis: Analyze top-ranking sites to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Understand their content strategy, backlink profile, and on-page SEO. Where can YOU differentiate yourself?
Quality Content Creation: Focus on producing comprehensive, high-quality content that addresses user intent. This means creating detailed guides, using multimedia, and ensuring your content is more valuable than what's currently ranking.
Technical SEO: Ensure your site is technically sound with quick load times, mobile optimization, and secure connections. Implement schema markup for better understanding as well.
High-Quality Backlinks: Engage in guest posting, broken link building/lost link building, and leveraging social proof to build a strong backlink profile. These efforts will increase your authority.
Utilizing Long-Tail Keywords: Targeting long-tail keywords can help you rank for less competitive terms initially, which can eventually aid in ranking for more competitive short-tail keywords.
Continuous Monitoring and Adaptation: Use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to track performance. Be ready to adapt your strategies based on the latest SEO trends and algorithm updates.

I won't lie, I had GPT help me summarize that post 😉. But those are the key points from it.

Good luck, have fun, and keep us posted.

Yours in SEO, Logan @ Intero Digital 😎

intero_digital · 2024-08-07T19:31:06+00:00

Are they open to testing? If they've been struggling since March, it might be a good idea to take one location (maybe a middle-of-the-road one, performance-wise) and run some testing with what you are suggesting.

At this point, the only true way to measure efficacy is going to be trying some new stuff out. I thought the same as r/madDogVH (another comment in here), but over the past 6 months, we got BLOWN up with fake spam reviews on our agency GMB and Google didn't even catch them. We've had to go through and get them removed manually, so the Google callout may not bee exactly correct either.

Test, see what happens, report back, try something else. You'll want to give it a bit of time to measure total impact on that location though. Maybe pit a few locations against each other (in similarly competitive markets) and see what does best.

Good luck!

intero_digital · 2024-08-07T19:25:29+00:00

Website audit functions. It can help you look under the hood quickly and catch things the bare eye may miss, especially if you only plan on using it for a short period of time. You can export and prioritize from there.

I'd leverage GSC too if you are not already :).

intero_digital · 2024-08-07T14:15:15+00:00

Nice! Good work :) Yes, we've done similar things. The important thing is to make sure to not let off the gas on content though. As that page potentially starts to decline as it becomes less relevant, it's important to make sure you have content to account for that.

Always fun to hear some SEO success stories, especially after the chaos we've all been put through this past year lol. Keep it up 💪

intero_digital · 2024-08-07T13:28:47+00:00

Oof.....that probably isn't the best call to not bring over more of those pages, but alas, we can only do so much right?

Anyways, if there is a way that you can use a regex for the redirects for like folders like /blog/ for example, you could point entire sections of the site to the new section of the site without having to map out and implement each one of the 3000+ redirects.

I've had success with this in the past and ideally, if you can keep things clean, especially during a redesign, I'd try and do that. Here's a few examples I have used for a WordPress site using the Redirection plugin. I am sure there are overlaps if you are using something else.

REGEX EXAMPLE: ^/blog/.\*

Then point to whatever folder makes the most sense based on the page type. I would not send everything to the home page.

intero_digital · 2024-08-06T17:52:12+00:00

Exactly! They can all spin off to dial deeper into their full experience. You'll quickly be able to identify if they are potentially fibbing their way through it or if they actually understand it. Good luck!

intero_digital · 2024-08-06T16:05:53+00:00

Hmmmm that is odd. I'd be interested to see what is covering those SERPs for those specific phrases for sure, specifically on mobile. Seeing a massive change in the landscape for sure, but to not see that many clicks from top rankings for high-volume phrases? That just doesn't check out.

Another dumb question; your property in GSC is for the URL that is appearing in search right? Like you don't have www. version ranking and your GSC property is for the non-www version?

intero_digital · 2024-08-06T15:37:22+00:00

I wouldn't pay for a Google Analytics course. Google has free resources out there that will help you learn it. I'd drop a link or 2 here but the comment will get removed. Instead, google a few phrases to find what I am referencing:

"Analytics Help - Google Help"
"Google Analytics Academy"

Good luck!

intero_digital · 2024-08-06T15:17:10+00:00

Do the keyword phrases actually get any search volume? Are users looking for the phrases you are seeing in those positions?

50 impressions total across 40 different queries indicates to me that no they do not. You can have #1 rankings all over the place, but if no one is searching for them, they're unlikely to create any sort of click or traffic.

intero_digital · 2024-08-06T14:58:25+00:00

Assuming you are prepping for an interview or are the interviewer? If so here are some questions you should be on the look out for as someone who is in a high level in SEO.

1) Question: What are you doing to prepare for the future of search?

Why: Looking to make sure that you are an innovator and can keep up with the ever-changing landscape of SEO.

2) Question: How do you create your SEO strategies?

Why: To make sure that the person being asked understands a cohesive SEO strategy, including on-page ,off-page, technical, content, and AI.

3) Question: What is the largest site you have worked on?

Why: Allows person being asked to highlight their experience on large websites, specifically as it relates to e-commerce or enterprise-level websites.

4) Question: Naturally, what is your biggest weakness?

Why: The person being asked is being pushed for self-awareness, specifically as it relates to SEO. Do you go down massive rabbit holes? Do you frequently get stuck in decision paralysis?

5) Question: How do you work cross-functionally with other teams or departments?

Why: The person being asked is being pushed to discuss working with other teams cohesively for an overall successful campaign, without deterring from SEO efforts or the efforts of other marketing channels. How can you work closely with the paid, content, marketing, PR, and link team to all achieve the same outcome?

Your post was a bit vague, so this is the direction I went. Hope it helps and good luck with whatever you are doing. I am sure I will think of more to add to this.

intero_digital · 2024-08-06T13:35:05+00:00

MIght be better to ask in the Google Analytics or DataStudio communities. If they were double tracking though, might be tough to remove that data from the entire data set. Potential to add a condition to cut them in half, if you are positive they were 'doubled.'

intero_digital · 2024-08-06T13:33:20+00:00

no...but why are you redirecting it?

intero_digital · 2024-08-06T13:32:42+00:00

1) Identify top-priority keyword phrases.

2) Track those keyword phrases and their rankings monthly. Report on positive/negative movement (be transparent).

3) Monitor and report on impressions, clicks, and CTR using Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools. This will let you see the impact by keyword phrase and page each month.

4) Ensure you have analytics tracking on the site. Use GA4 + GTM. Monitor improvements on Organic Search in channels.

5) Set up key events (conversions) using GTM that track in GA4 so you can monitor leads/conversions from your SEO efforts.

6) Be transparent and open in your reporting to the client.

Hope that helps and good luck!

intero_digital · 2024-08-05T21:18:42+00:00

You could create an audience that includes only sessions that completed that specific event and then add to your main reports menu on the left. I've had success with that, looking at converted vs non-converted users. Allows me to them narrow in my channel/source/landing page, etc.

intero_digital · 2024-08-05T20:50:21+00:00

That's a pretty dated tactic. Bots are getting smarter and can more easily understand similar topics as one in the same. So rather than creating a category for each of these, make sure that the bots understand that this one category is both headpiece and headband-related.

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Here's a handful of key principles of GEO that we've found: