Has anyone else lost their AI Overview traffic tracking after Google's May 6 update?

We were using the #:~:text= (Scroll-To-Text Fragment) in referral URLs as a proxy to identify traffic coming from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. When Google cited a page in AI Overview, the link included a text fragment like:

We used this as a signal in our analytics pipeline to segment AI-driven sessions separately from regular organic traffic. It wasn't perfect — Featured Snippets and PAA also generate STTF — but it was the closest thing we had to a deterministic marker for AI Overview clicks.

Since May 1 (officially announced May 6), we're seeing a ~90% drop in sessions with this fragment across both web and app. After digging in, it looks like Google completely changed the link architecture in AI Overviews and AI Mode — citations moved from a side panel (which used STTF anchors) to inline links woven directly into the AI response text. No more #:~:text= in the URLs.

The remaining 10% still showing STTF appear to be long-tail queries and some Featured Snippet/PAA traffic — not AI Overview specifically.

A few things we confirmed:

- Drop is simultaneous across platforms (not a tracking bug on our end)

- Step-change on May 1, not gradual — consistent with a feature flag rollout before the official announcement

- Google's share within STTF sessions dropped from ~70% to ~35%, meaning Google specifically stopped generating these fragments while other sources (browser highlight links, Bing) stayed stable

Now the AI traffic just looks like regular organic Google referrals

Has anyone found a reliable way to identify AI Overview / AI Mode clicks post-update? Are you combining multiple signals? Using any third-party tools that have adapted to the new link format?

Has anyone else lost their AI Overview traffic tracking after Google's May 6 update?

We were using the #:~:text= (Scroll-To-Text Fragment) in referral URLs as a proxy to identify traffic coming from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. When Google cited a page in AI Overview, the link included a text fragment like:

We used this as a signal in our analytics pipeline to segment AI-driven sessions separately from regular organic traffic. It wasn't perfect — Featured Snippets and PAA also generate STTF — but it was the closest thing we had to a deterministic marker for AI Overview clicks.

Since May 1 (officially announced May 6), we're seeing a ~90% drop in sessions with this fragment across both web and app. After digging in, it looks like Google completely changed the link architecture in AI Overviews and AI Mode — citations moved from a side panel (which used STTF anchors) to inline links woven directly into the AI response text. No more #:~:text= in the URLs.

The remaining 10% still showing STTF appear to be long-tail queries and some Featured Snippet/PAA traffic — not AI Overview specifically.

A few things we confirmed:

- Drop is simultaneous across platforms (not a tracking bug on our end)

- Step-change on May 1, not gradual — consistent with a feature flag rollout before the official announcement

- Google's share within STTF sessions dropped from ~70% to ~35%, meaning Google specifically stopped generating these fragments while other sources (browser highlight links, Bing) stayed stable

Now the AI traffic just looks like regular organic Google referrals

Has anyone found a reliable way to identify AI Overview / AI Mode clicks post-update? Are you combining multiple signals? Using any third-party tools that have adapted to the new link format?