Full Answer

Google AI Mode reached 75 million daily active users and surpassed 100 million monthly active users after Google made it the default search interface in May 2026, according to data published by Digital Applied. For comparison, ChatGPT reported 900 million weekly active users during the same period, but ChatGPT traffic is identifiable in analytics because it does not strip referrer data the way Google AI Mode does.

The measurement problem is structural. AI Mode appends rel="noreferrer" to every outbound link in its responses. When a user clicks through to your site, the browser sends no referrer header, so GA4 and Search Console classify the visit as ordinary organic search. Your largest AI-sourced traffic channel is already arriving — it is just hiding inside a line item you have been reading for years. A deeper breakdown of how this misclassification works is covered in Google AI Mode Traffic Shows as Organic in GA4.

Identifying this traffic requires isolating sessions that carry the adview_query_id parameter Google still passes in the URL, or building server-side detection logic that flags visits with a missing referrer but a Google-originated landing pattern. Until that instrumentation is in place, any traffic report that credits "organic search" is overstating organic and understating AI by whatever share AI Mode actually drives — a share that is growing every month.