A ChatGPT bug hid a week of website visits from analytics

For about a week this month, visits to websites from ChatGPT were wrongly counted as "direct" traffic in tools such as Google Analytics, making it look as if visits from ChatGPT had fallen sharply.

What happened

From the evening of 8 October (UK time), links clicked in ChatGPT stopped carrying the tag that identifies them as coming from ChatGPT, and most clicks also lost the information that shows where a visitor came from. Analytics firm LLM Pulse reported about 46% fewer ChatGPT visits between 9 and 11 October.

The fix

Cedric Huesler of Adobe said OpenAI told him on 14 October that it was a known bug, and that a fix began rolling out on 15 October. By later that day, he said, tracked visits from ChatGPT were back to roughly normal. OpenAI has not confirmed this publicly. "Relieved. It was a bug," Huesler wrote on LinkedIn.

Analysis: what it means for your clinic

If your website figures showed fewer visits from ChatGPT between 8 and 15 October, it was most likely the tracking, not a real drop. Don't change your marketing based on that week. Analytics will never capture every patient who finds you through AI tools, so it is worth asking new patients how they heard about you and recording the answer.

Disclosure: Morning Surgery's editor also runs Promptpop, an agency that helps clinics appear in AI search.

Sources: Relevant Audience (October 2026); LLM Pulse (October 2026).