Welcome to this week’s Pulse. The updates affect how you measure AI Assistant traffic, the impact of structured data on viewability, and how a major publisher plans its life after search.
This is what matters to you and your work.
Google Analytics Adds Native AI Assistant Channel
Google Analytics now assigns traffic from recognized AI chatbots to a dedicated “AI Assistant” default channel group. Custom channel groups with regular expression patterns are no longer the only way to separate AI assistant visits from referrals.
Key facts
Sessions from recognized AI assistants now receive “ai-assistant” as media, are routed to a new default channel “AI Assistant” and get a reserved campaign label “(ai-assistant)”. Google cited ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude as examples, but did not publish the full list of recognized referrers. All three changes occur automatically.
Why it matters
Anyone running a custom channel group to isolate AI chatbot traffic can now compare their setup to Google’s native version. The custom regular expression patterns recommended by Google last August still cover platforms outside the recognized benchmark list. Both can work side by side.
The bigger question is what you do with the data once it’s visible. AI Assistant traffic is now a separate item in Acquisitions, Users, and Channels reporting. This makes it easy to compare conversion behavior, session quality, and volume against organic search without filtering or manual workarounds.
Google has not said how quickly the list of recognized referrers will expand as new platforms launch. If you follow AI assistants beyond the three named examples, let your custom groups work.
What industry professionals say
Kevin Indig, growth advisor at Growth Memo, commented on LinkedIn:
“It’s about time! I literally complained about this on stage yesterday”
Johan Strand, Senior Digital Analyst and Partner at Ctrl Digital, wrote on LinkedIn:
“If you already have a custom channel group set up to check AI traffic, it’s probably a good idea to adapt it now.”
Read our full coverage: Google Analytics adds AI Assistant as default channel group
Google completes deprecation of FAQ rich results
Google has abandoned rich FAQ results, completing a phase-out that began a few years ago. The company added a notice to its FAQ structured data documentation without a separate blog post or explanation.
Key facts
Rich FAQ results no longer appear in search results. Google will remove the FAQ search appearance filter in Search Console, Rich Results reporting, and support for Rich Results testing in June. API support ends in August.
Why it matters
If your reporting pipelines pull data specific to API FAQs, those API calls should be updated before the August deadline.
Leaving the markup in place should not create any problems, but it no longer produces this visible result. Whether the FAQ schema makes it easier for AI to search is a separate question, and deprecation doesn’t answer it.
Read our full coverage: Google removes rich FAQ results from search
Ahrefs Report: Adding Schema Did Not Increase AI Citations
An Ahrefs report tracked 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD schema and found no significant increase in AI citations in Google’s AI Previews, AI Mode, or ChatGPT.
Key facts
Ahrefs compared each processed page to controls that never added schema and measured changes over 30-day windows. AI previews showed a 4.6% drop compared to controls, while AI Mode (+2.4%) and ChatGPT (+2.2%) showed changes too small to distinguish from noise.
Why it matters
The correlation between AI schemas and citations has been widely cited as evidence that structured data improves AI visibility. Ahrefs tested whether the relationship appeared causal and found no evidence of significant improvement, at least for the pages already cited. Sites with schema also tend to invest in better content, stronger authority, and more links. These factors may explain the correlation better than the tagging itself.
The report cannot say whether the schema helps pages that are not yet visible to AI systems. This is a different population that needs its own test. However, for pages that already receive citations, adding JSON-LD is unlikely to be the unlock.
What SEO Professionals Say
Chris Long, co-founder of Nectiv, wrote on LinkedIn:
“This data changes my view a bit on how effective it is in actually influencing AI citations.”
Read our full coverage: Schema markup did not move AI quotes in Ahrefs test
Condé Nast CEO: Plan like search traffic will suck
Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch said he asked the company’s teams to plan as if search traffic was zero. Lynch made the comments in an interview on TBPN, a technology talk show that OpenAI acquired in April.
Key facts
Lynch described three consecutive years in which internal forecasts underestimated actual declines in search traffic. He expects search to be a single-digit percentage of total traffic, not literally zero.
Lynch pointed to a “dumbbell effect” in which large, authoritative brands and small, niche publications perform well, while middle-of-the-road brands are most exposed. Condé Nast’s digital subscriptions grew revenue 29% last year.
Why it matters
Lynch describes what third-party data has been showing for months. Chartbeat reported a 60% drop in search referrals for small publishers over two years. The Reuters Institute found that media executives expect search traffic to decline by more than 40% over three years. The difference is that a CEO who runs Vogue, The New Yorker, and GQ now builds budgets around those numbers.
Observing the bar is worth testing against your own client portfolio or publishing operation. Lynch’s argument is that brands without deep category authority or strong niche focus don’t have a clear path forward. AI previews, paid links, and sponsored results fill the page before organic listings appear.
What SEO Professionals Say
Kevin Indig, growth advisor at Growth Memo, commented on LinkedIn:
“It’s logical, no way out for publishers in AEO.”
Read our full coverage: Condé Nast CEO: Plan like search traffic will suck
Theme of the week: Measurement catches up with the problem
The tools and signals that defined search visibility for years are outdated, questioned, or abandoned by the publishers who depended on them.
The FAQ-rich results are gone. Schema’s role in AI citations is weaker than the suggested correlation. A major publisher plans as if search traffic will not recover. Each story involves an environment in which the old measurement infrastructure no longer fits the landscape.
The GA4 update is the other side of the coin. Google builds native tracking for the traffic source which is increasing while the traditional source is contracting.
AI assistant traffic is only a fraction of what search offers. But it is now visible by default, in the same reports, next to the channels on which it is measured.
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Featured image: PeopleImages/Shutterstock; Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
