In October, analytics services recorded a decrease in visits identified as traffic from ChatGPT. Experts linked this to the disappearance of UTM tags and source data for some links in the chatbot’s responses.

Without the utm_source=chatgpt.com parameter and information about the referring page, such visits may be classified as Direct traffic. Visits and purchases are still tracked, but it becomes harder to assess ChatGPT’s contribution.

According to Profound’s observations, tags started disappearing on October 8, and by the morning of October 16, at least one link in about 99% of collected responses with source citations had the tags back. The return of the tags does not automatically restore attribution for the outage period.

What to Consider in Reports

You may have underestimated visits and conversions from ChatGPT between October 8–16: some visits could have been classified as Direct due to missing source tags. Compare the statistics of both channels with your site’s total visits and conversions before concluding that ChatGPT’s effectiveness has dropped.

If you are running traffic through ChatGPT Ads, separately check your own UTM tags on ad links: the described issue affects links in chatbot responses. We covered launching paid traffic from this source in our video with Kirill — including campaign setup for nutra and a trading case study.