News & analysis
Your Rank Tracker and ChatGPT Numbers Are Both Broken Right Now
Search Engine Journal reports that Google search results are showing anomalies that mess with rank trackers, while a ChatGPT tracking tag bug cut reported referral sessions by roughly 45% before a fix began rolling out mid-October.
By Roomer Editorial · · 4 min read
What happened to rank-tracking data this month?
Rank-tracking company Nozzle found that between September 13 and October 9, 8% of the Google results pages it checks against keyword history were missing most of the sites that usually rank there. Those sites came back on a later check. That compares with 0.17% from August 20 to September 9, and the share peaked at roughly a quarter of pages between September 27 and 29.
Nozzle calls these "poisoned" pages and attributes the pattern to Google's response to AI scraping. Nozzle's report didn't include a statement from Google. For keywords where a client's own site would normally rank, that site dropped out of the top 10 on 58.6% of affected pages, compared with 2.7% normally.
If a client's rankings fell off a cliff in late September or October, check whether Search Console shows a matching drop in impressions and clicks for that query and page. If it doesn't, the rank tracker is probably the thing that's wrong, not the site.
Why are ChatGPT referral numbers unreliable right now?
ChatGPT-attributed sessions in GA4 fell sharply this month because inline links in ChatGPT's answers stopped carrying the utm_source=chatgpt.com tag after GPT-6 rolled out. Without the tag, that traffic can land under "Direct" in analytics instead of showing up as ChatGPT-sourced.
Graphite CEO Ethan Smith reported an approximate 45% drop in ChatGPT sessions across sites his company tracks with meaningful AI Assistant Channel traffic. Adobe's Cedric Huesler said OpenAI confirmed the bug on October 14 and began deploying a fix on October 15. By around 9 a.m. PT that day, Huesler said tagged ChatGPT clicks had returned to roughly 95-100% of the prior week's volume across the sites he tracks. SEO consultant Glenn Gabe said he hadn't seen the fix take effect yet, and OpenAI's October 15 release notes didn't mention the bug or a resolution.
Huesler places the affected window between October 8 and 15, and both he and Smith recommend flagging it in client reports so the dip isn't read as lost traffic. Since most ChatGPT clicks still arrive without any referrer at all, Huesler suggests tracking sessions by the UTM tag specifically rather than relying on the platform's default channel grouping.
How are Google and Bing changing AI search reporting?
Google is adjusting how links appear in AI Mode and AI Overviews, showing inline links higher in responses more often, and testing a top-of-response section linking to official pages for specific tasks. It's also expanding carousels for timely articles that highlight a user's Preferred Sources, and testing creator and publisher names on AI Mode video results.
Every link inside an AI Overview is logged at the same position as the overview itself, so moving a link higher inside the response doesn't by itself change its reported position in Search Console. To even qualify as a preferred source, a site has to be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console.
Bing Webmaster Tools added a beta feature called Topics Portfolio to its AI Performance report. It groups queries a site is cited for in AI answers into broader topics, with approximate citation and query counts, plus a list of "opportunity queries" where competitors are cited and the site isn't. Microsoft says to treat the numbers as directional, not exact, and the opportunity list can include competitor brand terms that aren't relevant.
Separately, open Google job listings describe teams building AI-generated content and agentic content flows for Discover and Notifications, with one director-level listing describing a goal of turning Discover into a "hyper-personalized concierge experience." Neither listing gives a timeline or specifies how much of the feed AI content would fill. Search Console's generative AI report for Discover tracks only impressions, per Google's help documentation.
Roomer Editorial's take
None of this is a reason to panic about a traffic dip. It's a reason to stop trusting any single dashboard for a few weeks.
In Roomer Editorial's view, a travel creator who posted a surge of Lisbon hotel content in September and sees a rankings drop in a third-party tracker right now should check Search Console before touching a single page. Same logic applies to anyone watching ChatGPT referral numbers fall off in GA4 — that dip is more likely a tagging bug than a sign your content stopped getting cited.
The bigger pattern worth watching: Google is actively building AI content generation into Discover, and both Google and Bing are quietly shifting how creators get credited inside AI answers rather than classic search results. That's a long-term distribution shift, not a reporting glitch, and it's a separate problem from the noise in this month's numbers.
Either way, this is exactly the kind of moment where owning a site you control, rather than depending entirely on referral traffic you can't verify, matters. On Roomer, your videos live on a site that's yours, with bookable pages and commissions on direct bookings, so a tracking bug on someone else's platform doesn't erase the work.
One thing to do this week: before flagging any ranking or referral drop to a client or in your own reporting, cross-check it against Search Console and your UTM-tagged data. Don't report a platform's number as fact until you've confirmed it against your own.
Source: Search Engine Journal
