What's happened to my ChatGPT traffic?
Search Engine Roundtable posted on 14 October that ChatGPT has changed how it sends traffic to websites.
It used to add a utm_source of chatgpt.com which allowed analytics platforms to easily identify that traffic as coming from ChatGPT.
This has stopped recently, around the same time as they launched GPT-6. The result is that ChatGPT traffic will more likely appear as Direct source.
Adobe’s Cedric Huesler saw the same pattern across about 500 pages. ChatGPT visits fell by around 31,000 a day and "Direct" rose by around 26,000.
OpenAI hasn't confirmed the change yet, so things might change some more.
Why it matters
Many marketing teams have started keeping a close eye on that ChatGPT traffic. I've spoken to a bunch of teams this year who have been told that increasing AI referrals is a KPI for them, and so this change could skew their findings. It makes ChatGPT look weaker than it is, and Direct look stronger than it is and without explanation, it might (at a surface level) suggest that your AI strategies aren't working anymore.
What we recommend doing
- Add an annotation on analytics for this week, so you don't misread this as a downward trend when you come back to it in a few months time
- Compare the before and after, and see if pages you know get good AI traffic have the ChatGPT reduction but Direct increase that Cedric identified
- Report and contextualise AI traffic source as the floor - the absolute minimum that traffic has come from AI, but in reality much of the Direct traffic will be AI also
- If you can, ask people "Where did you find us" on forms to collect more data about what channels are converting
The lesson
Reporting that depends on a platform’s tagging behaviour will likely break over time. They don't owe us consistency or coherency (unfortunately).
Arguably, a more sustainable approach is to watch overall trends, annotate changes, and combine analytics with direct feedback from customers.
Emma is Operations Director at Mutual, leading client services and overseeing the ongoing management and optimisation of client websites. With over 20 years of agency experience and CIM marketing qualifications, she brings both strategic grounding and practical depth to digital performance.
Her optimisation work spans SEO and generative engine optimisation (GEO) — helping clients maintain visibility not just in traditional search, but in AI-generated answers and overviews. She works closely with clients to translate business goals into measurable improvements across search performance, content, and user experience.
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