ChatGPT Referral Traffic Crash: Why Website Clicks Fell 52% Overnight

Josh Blyskal’ take on Referral Traffic Drop from ChatGPT

According to Profound’s Josh Blyskal, referral traffic from ChatGPT is reported to have decreased since July 21, 2025. Josh has analyzed over 1 billion ChatGPT citations and 1 million referral visits across a sample of sites spanning multiple verticals.

Moreover, the numbers make it clearer than ever. Check out more data below:

• Wikipedia has jumped 62% from its July low, and shows around 13% of citation share.
• While Reddit citations have jumped up 87% since July 23, 2025, which is in the top 10% of all citations of ChatGPT.

Now, the top three websites: Wikipedia, Reddit, and TechRadar have together brought around 22% of all citations and up 53% in a month.

So, as per ChatGPT, now a few ‘answer-first’ sources have gained more visibility, while other branded websites have lost the same, along with millions of potential referral clicks.

Josh has also said that this sudden referral traffic down is not the effect of ChatGPT-5 since ChatGPT-5 was launched on August 7, 2025. But this citation consolidation started weeks before. It also recommends that OpenAI manually reweight its retrieval system to favor helpful answers.

Moreover, Josh was seen sharing two major things in his LinkedIn post, which are important for B2B marketers. The first is that ChatGPT is crossing branded content, which gives priority to conversion. The second is the answer-first platforms, such as Wikipedia, Reddit, getting more priority as they are providing answers directly to the questions of users.

Josh wrote, “The citation opportunity is massive for brands willing to shift from conversion-first to answer-first content”.

Lastly, Josh exclaimed that the citation experiments of OpenAI may draw big traffic swings. So, the brands that are not really getting the real answers will be sidelined in ChatGPT answers.

Also Read: Generative AI in Film & TV: Netflix Shares New Content Guidelines

Siege Media Analysis on Referral Traffic

Siege Media has analyzed around 352 million sessions from 193 past and current clients who shared their data from May to July 2025. Well, their main motive was to check how this new referral channel comes together against the traditional Google search in the real-world setup and how it should be taken by users.

It was made very clear that ChatGPT has been a notable new source of traffic, but it also presents early signs of volatility. However, Google searches have been growing significantly, showcasing growth, which makes it be key driver of higher traffic and ROI.

Some of the key highlights of this analysis are mentioned below:

• So, the organic traffic has been jumping since the tracking was started in May, with around a 15.9% jump in July 2025 alone. It showcases the endurance of strength.
• Now, the ChatGPT referral traffic has also seen a spike of 10.7% in June; however, it fell 3.8% in July. It is a pattern to keep an eye out for increased growth potential.
• In July, organic traffic was seen to be over 460 times larger than ChatGPT traffic. For strategic resource allocation and SEO for traditional search engines, such as Google, is still the first priority.
• The other important thing for the marketers now is exploration of generative engine optimization (GEO); however, SEO strategy must be followed as well to get significantly sustainable growth.

As per this research, organic search has been a consistent key driver of traffic by a huge range. In May, 10.77 million organic sessions were recorded, which jumped to 113.1 million in June and then 131 million in July.

Also Read: LinkedIn’s Algorithm Works Just Fine, You’re Just Using It Wrong

While the ChatGPT referral recorded around 265,947 sessions in the month of May, which rose to 294,497 in June, before it went down to 283,169 in July. By this, what remains clear is that SEO will continue being the go-to choice for traditional searches and it will stay.

So, right now, having a stronger foundation in SEO for search engines will continue to be the highly sought-after and scalable path to follow.