ChatGPT traffic just vanished from your analytics
Glenn Gabe says ChatGPT has now stripped tracking tags from every link it cites, so your analytics will show a big drop in ChatGPT visits that never actually happened. He thinks it is a bug.
Read the whole week in one goRank trackers are mostly fixed, but not fully
Why your traffic moved
Study shows Wikipedia and news sites win AI citations
A study of 222,753 Google searches across 76,450 public conversations looked at how Gemini, Google's AI assistant, picks the sources it credits. Wikipedia and news sites lead the citations, YouTube gets read but is rarely cited, and Gemini can also search without showing any sources at all.
Who this affects: Anyone wondering why AI answers rarely link to their site.
- Do nothing today, this is background on how citations get picked
Getting into AI answers
ChatGPT visits have now vanished from your analytics
ChatGPT has now dropped the tracking tags (the bits of a link that tell your analytics where a visitor came from) from all of its citations, not just some. Glenn Gabe said yesterday he still saw them in the "More" sources panel, but as of this morning he sees none at all.
If you check GA4, you will see a big drop in ChatGPT visits based on this change.
Who this affects: Anyone who tracks how much traffic ChatGPT sends them.
- Expect a ChatGPT drop in analytics this week, not real loss
- Our take: note the date so the dip is explainable later
Google turned on a shared shopping cart today
Google Universal Cart went live today, Barry Schwartz reported. It runs on something Google calls the Universal Commerce Protocol. No details yet on what sellers need to do to take part.
Who this affects: Anyone selling products online through their own website.
- Read Google's announcement before changing anything on your store