ChatGPT clicks may now land in GA4 as direct visits. Here is how to spot the shift, set up AI tracking and report it honestly to your boss or client.
If your ChatGPT numbers in Google Analytics fell off a cliff this week, your customers probably haven't stopped clicking. The clicks may simply have changed labels.
On October 14, Barry Schwartz reported at Search Engine Roundtable that OpenAI appears to have removed the UTM tag it adds to ChatGPT links, and that visits are now often filed under direct traffic. If you report on AI search to a board, a boss or a client, you need a plan before your next monthly report goes out.
What actually changed
Back in June, OpenAI began adding a UTM parameter to ChatGPT links, which made them easy to spot in analytics. According to the Roundtable report, that tagging disappeared in October, around the release of GPT-6. Schwartz notes it is unclear whether the change was intentional.
Cedric Huesler of Adobe described the mechanics: links now open with `noopener,noreferrer`, so the visit carries no tag and no referrer. In his words, "your analytics files the visit under direct."
Huesler compared about 500 pages where ChatGPT drove at least 5% of visits, looking at October 9–13 against the week before:
- ChatGPT visits fell by about 31,000 a day.
- Direct visits rose by about 26,000 a day on the same pages.
- Direct traffic rose on two in three pages that lost ChatGPT traffic. The week before it was roughly a coin flip.
- Mobile consent banner exposure for new direct visitors rose from 36% to 44%, close to the 55% seen for ChatGPT visitors, which hints the new direct visitors behave like ChatGPT visitors.
Sébastien Billard also posted on X that he saw a sharp drop in ChatGPT human traffic from around October 9. This is early, and not every site will see the same pattern. Treat it as a strong signal, not a settled fact.
Step 1: Check whether you are affected
Open GA4 and go to Reports, then Traffic acquisition. Set the dimension to Session source / medium and search for "chatgpt". Look for a row like chatgpt.com / referral. Compare October 9–15 with the previous week.
Then add Landing page + query string as a secondary dimension and list the pages that used to receive ChatGPT visits. If those same pages show a jump in direct sessions over the same days, you are probably looking at the same effect Huesler described.
Be careful about one thing: a rise in direct traffic has other causes too, such as email without tracking, offline campaigns or consent changes. Use the page-level match as your evidence, not the sitewide total.
Step 2: Build an AI channel in GA4
Even with the tag gone, many AI visits still arrive with a referrer. A custom channel group makes them visible in one place. Per Google's channel group documentation, you need Editor access at the property level.
- In Admin, under Data display, open Channel groups and click Create new channel group.
- Name it something like "Default plus AI".
- Click Add new channel, name it "AI assistants", and add a condition on Source that matches a regex of the AI domains you care about.
- Click Reorder and drag the new channel above Referral, then Apply.
- Click Save group.
Order matters because, in Google's words, traffic goes into "the first channel whose definition it matches." Put specific channels above broad ones. Standard properties can hold two custom groups, so check you have a free slot.
Rankshift's GA4 guide suggests a source pattern covering chatgpt.com, gemini.google.com, openai.com, perplexity.ai and copilot.microsoft.com. GA4 regex matching is case sensitive and new AI domains keep appearing, so test the pattern against your real source values and revisit it each quarter.
Step 3: Tag the links you control
You can't tag a link ChatGPT chooses to show. You can tag links you place yourself: in partner pages, press mentions, profiles and any content you publish into AI tools. Use consistent values such as utm_source=chatgpt, utm_medium=organic and utm_campaign=ai_referral, as Rankshift also recommends.
Keep a simple naming sheet so nobody on your team invents utm_source=ChatGPT, utm_source=chat-gpt and utm_source=gpt in the same month. Messy tagging is how clean data turns into three confusing rows.
Step 4: Use server logs as a second opinion
Analytics tags can be blocked, consent banners can suppress them and referrers can be stripped. Your server or CDN logs see requests regardless. Billard reported a drop in chatgpt-user bot traffic and a rise in OAI-SearchBot traffic from around October 7, which is the kind of pattern logs make visible and GA4 never will.
Ask your developer or hosting provider to export a weekly count of requests by user agent for those two bots, plus landing page hits with an empty referrer. It takes an hour to set up once and gives you a trend line that does not depend on a tag.
Step 5: Change how you report it
AI referrals were already undercounted before this change. Rankshift notes that people on the free version of ChatGPT don't send referrer data, so some visits were always filed as direct. This week's shift just made the gap wider.
In your next report, show three numbers side by side: tagged AI sessions, direct sessions on pages with prior AI traffic, and your log-based bot or referrer trend. Label the middle one as "likely AI-influenced", not as confirmed. That is honest, and it protects you if OpenAI changes the behaviour again next month.
It also helps to track what AI visitors do, not just that they arrive. Per Huesler's data, ChatGPT visitors saw consent banners more often than the average new visitor, so consent settings on your site can change how much of that traffic you can measure at all.
Key takeaways
- ChatGPT clicks may now be recorded as direct, so a fall in ChatGPT sessions does not mean a fall in real visits.
- Check your own data page by page before telling anyone it is happening to you.
- Build an AI assistants channel in GA4 and place it above Referral.
- Tag links you control with one agreed naming scheme.
- Use server logs as an independent check and report AI traffic as a range, not a single number.
Reliable measurement is the base of everything else, from web analytics setup to channel attribution and your wider SEO reporting. If you want help sorting out which of your traffic is really coming from AI tools, our GEO and AI search optimisation work starts with exactly this kind of audit.
If you would like a second pair of eyes on your analytics, get a free quote and we will tell you what we find.
John Doe
Supreb Information. Thanks
15 July 2014 View replies . 1