22.4% of AI Overview Traffic Misattributed to Direct in GA4

A nine-month first-party study of one transportation brand found that 22.4% of Google AI Overview referral traffic was attributed to Direct in GA4 instead of Organic. The dataset covered 51,200 referral events across 1,661 cited snippets, with AI Overviews ranging from 2% to 17% of organic sessions.

• 51,200 AI Overview referral events across 1,661 cited snippets over nine months
• 22.4% of AI Overview traffic landed in GA4's Direct channel: 16.8% in April to 29.3% in May 2026
• AI Overviews made up 7.53% of organic sessions on average, peaking at 16–17% and falling to 2–4%
• The #:~:text= fragment in URLs is cited as a reason GA4 misclassifies these visits