Two numbers in your reports may be wrong right now, and neither one is your fault. A rank tracker and a ChatGPT referral line both got scrambled this fall, and both can be checked against a second source.
TL;DR: Search Engine Journal's Matt Southern rounds up a messy few weeks of search data: rank trackers showing missing sites, ChatGPT traffic that dipped because of a tagging bug, and Google AI link changes that don't change Search Console positions. The fix is the same each time. Check every number against a second source.
📉 Your Rank Tracker May Have Been Reading Broken Pages
Rank-tracking company Nozzle flagged an odd pattern. From Sept. 13 to Oct. 9, 8% of the Google results pages it could check were missing most of the sites that usually rank for that keyword. Those sites came back on a later check.
The rate peaked at about a quarter of pages from Sept. 27 to 29. In the baseline period, Aug. 20 to Sept. 9, it was 0.17%.
Where a customer's site would normally rank, it was missing from the top 10 on 58.6% of the affected pages. In the baseline, that number was 2.7%. Nozzle calls these pages "poisoned" and ties the pattern to Google's response to AI scraping, but Google didn't comment, so treat that cause as Nozzle's theory.
Here is why it matters. If your tracker showed a sudden drop in that window, the drop may live in the tracker's data and not in your traffic.
🏷️ ChatGPT Traffic Didn't Vanish. It Lost Its Label.
Earlier this month, ChatGPT-attributed sessions in Google Analytics 4 fell sharply. Analysts linked it to inline links in ChatGPT answers no longer carrying the utm_source=chatgpt.com tag after the GPT-6 rollout. A UTM tag is a bit of text added to a link so analytics can tell where a click came from.
Without the tag, those visits likely landed under "Direct." Graphite CEO Ethan Smith reported about a 45% drop in ChatGPT sessions across the sites Graphite tracks with meaningful AI assistant traffic.
Adobe's Cedric Huesler said OpenAI confirmed a known bug to him on Oct. 14 and began deploying a fix on Oct. 15. By about 9 a.m. PT that day, he saw tagged clicks back to roughly 95-100% of the same hour the week before, across thousands of sites.
Not everyone has seen it yet. Glenn Gabe said he hadn't noticed the change, and OpenAI's release notes don't mention the bug or the fix. So the fix looks real, but it isn't officially documented.
🔗 Google Moved the Links. Your Reported Position Didn't.
Google is showing inline links higher in AI Mode and AI Overviews more often. It also plans to test a section at the top of some answers that links to official pages for specific tasks, and it is testing creator and publisher names on AI Mode video results.
Here is the catch for reporting. In Search Console, every link in an AI Overview gets the same position as the AI Overview itself. A link can look more prominent to a searcher without its reported position changing at all.
Preferred Sources carousels for timely articles are also expanding to more locations and languages. To qualify, a site has to be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console, per Google's documentation.
I made the broader case for trusting your own data over Google's signals in September.
🛠️ How to Check Your Numbers This Week
Compare Your Rank Tracker to Search Console
Pick the queries that dropped between Sept. 13 and Oct. 9. Pull impressions and clicks for those same queries and pages in Search Console.
If they fell too, the loss is real. If they didn't, your tracker likely saw one of those broken pages.
Annotate the ChatGPT Dip in Your Reports
Add a note covering Oct. 8 to 15 so nobody reads the dip as lost demand. Then check Direct traffic for the same dates.
Huesler also points out that most ChatGPT clicks arrive without a referrer. That is why the UTM tag matters so much for counting them.
⚡ Quick Hits
Bing Topics Portfolio (beta): The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools now groups the queries you're cited for into topics, and lists "opportunity queries" where other sites are cited and yours isn't. Microsoft calls the numbers directional, and the list may include competitor brand terms.
Google Discover: Job listings describe a team that recommends AI-generated content in the Discover feed, plus "agentic flows" that generate content for Discover and Notifications. Neither listing gives a timeline, and Search Console's report for Discover's AI features only shows impressions, per its help page.
Hit reply
Did your ChatGPT sessions dip between Oct. 8 and 15? Check your Direct traffic for the same dates and tell me what you found.
One thing I'm thinking about: every number in this issue was accurate to whoever reported it, and still misleading on its own. A rank tracker saw broken pages, GA4 saw untagged clicks, and Search Console gave one position to many links.
None of that means your tools are bad. Each one sees a slice, and a second slice tells you whether to worry. Before you explain a drop to a client, check it against something else first.
Till next time,
