A drop in ChatGPT traffic may be a tracking problem

A reported ChatGPT tracking bug made some website visits harder to identify. Before treating a fall in recorded ChatGPT visits as lost customers, check your wider traffic and enquiries.

On October 20, Search Engine Land reported a ChatGPT tracking bug. Some outgoing links had stopped carrying a tracking tag: a short label that helps website analytics identify where a visitor came from. Adobe’s Cedric Huesler said OpenAI confirmed the bug privately and began rolling out a fix on October 15. This confirmation was reported secondhand, rather than through a public OpenAI announcement.

When both the tag and information about the referring website are missing, a visit can appear as “direct” traffic, meaning the analytics tool cannot identify its source. For a small business, that can make ChatGPT look less useful even when customers are still arriving.

This does not mean every fall in recorded ChatGPT visits is a measurement error. It also does not show whether your business appeared more or less often in AI answers. Visits measure people clicking through to your website, not everyone who saw a recommendation.

If your reports show a drop around October 8–15, compare recorded ChatGPT visits with direct visits to the same pages, then check whether enquiries or bookings changed too. An increase in direct visits is a clue, not proof that those visitors came from ChatGPT. Avoid changing your marketing plans based on that one traffic label alone.