ChatGPT stopped adding a utm_source tag and referrer data to its links after OpenAI released GPT-6, causing visits it sent to be counted as direct traffic in Google Analytics and similar tools, starting around October 8.
Adobe’s Cedric Huesler tracked about 500 pages that got at least 5% of their visits from ChatGPT and found that ChatGPT traffic fell by about 31,000 visits a day in the week after the launch while direct traffic rose by about 26,000 on the same pages, almost a one-to-one exchange. (I said almost.) SEO researcher Tomek Rudzki found that ChatGPT was also including direct website links far more often after GPT-6, and that 54% of them went to a homepage instead of the specific page with the answer.
The issue led to insane conspiracy theories across the web.
For example, one lunatic predicted on LinkedIn that the reason OpenAI began stripping UTM parameters is because it’s about to launch an analytics platform that forces website owners to register with them in order to get accurate analytics. It’s the same play Google ran a decade ago — strip the keyword data out of referrals, then hand it back through Search Console in exchange for verifying your site. (Okay, that lunatic was me.)
It turns out, the issue was a bug, or so OpenAI says. By October 15, they started rolling out a fix in stages, and by mid-morning, Huesler reported that ChatGPT clicks were back to roughly 95-100% of where they were at the same hour a week earlier.
Was it actually a bug though? Or was it a test?
I’m not yet convinced either way. On one hand, why would OpenAI want to make it difficult for website owners to track how many visits ChatGPT sends them? If anything, they’d want to inflate that number, not obscure it.
On the other hand, forcing website owners to register for its (currently fictitious) analytics platform to track those clicks would offer a more accurate way to deliver the data, as it’d be coming from ChatGPT itself instead of having to be tracked by third-party platforms via an imperfect attribution mechanism. I’d imagine that even before the “bug,” some of that Direct traffic was coming from ChatGPT, and it wasn’t getting credit for the referral.
So, new theory unlocked: It wasn’t a bug. It was a test. OpenAnalytics coming soon.
