Open your analytics and look at direct traffic since 9 October. If it has jumped, you have probably not won new word of mouth. You have lost the tag that told you ChatGPT sent those people. The visits still arrive. They simply arrive anonymous, and every report built on that number will be wrong until you know why.
Search and SEO
ChatGPT stopped telling you it sent the traffic
Around 9 October, with the release of GPT-6, OpenAI stopped adding its tracking tag to the links it serves. Those links used to carry utm_source=chatgpt.com. They now also strip the referrer, so your analytics has nothing left to read and files the visit as direct.
Cedric Huesler at Adobe measured roughly 500 pages that previously took at least 5 percent of their visits from ChatGPT. Comparing 9 to 13 October against the week before, ChatGPT visits fell by about 31,000 a day while direct visits rose by about 26,000 a day. The traffic did not leave. It changed its name. On mobile, the share of direct visitors seeing the consent banner, which marks a new visitor, rose from 36 percent to 44 percent.
Why this matters for your business: If you report on AI traffic, your October numbers are already wrong and they will stay wrong. Stop treating the ChatGPT line as real. Watch direct traffic to deep pages instead, because nobody types a long product URL from memory, so a jump there is almost certainly AI traffic. Then add one question to your enquiry forms asking how people found you.
Google says keywords in your URL barely matter
Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin opened a new Google video series this week by working through how URLs are handled. Illyes called keywords in a URL or a domain an incredibly small signal for ranking. He repeated the long standing advice to separate words in a URL path with hyphens rather than underscores.
Why this matters for your business: Stop paying a premium for an exact match domain, and stop rebuilding a working URL structure to chase keywords. Changing URLs costs you redirects, lost links and months of recovery, and the gain Illyes describes is close to nothing. Put that budget into the page itself. Keep using hyphens on new pages.
Google is also testing AI Mode as a left sidebar on the ordinary results page, with chat history and its own settings. It is a test rather than a rollout, but it shows where the results page is heading.
Social media
WhatsApp calls now work for people who do not have WhatsApp
WhatsApp has added guest links. You create a link, send it to anyone, and they join your call from a computer browser by typing in a name. No account, no app, no download. You approve each guest from a waiting room and can remove anyone at any point. Guests cannot see phone numbers or send messages. Group calls run to 32 people, and calendar integration is on the way.
Why this matters for your business: In South Africa WhatsApp is already where business conversations happen, and the account requirement was the one thing keeping it out of client meetings. You can now run a discovery call, a demo or a handover without asking anyone to install software or create a login. Try a guest link on one client call this week before you change how you book meetings.
YouTube also switched its conversational AI search on for every user in the United States this week. South Africa usually follows within months, so titles that state a real customer question will start to beat titles stuffed with keywords.
Your website and your ad spend
Google Ads will let you rank your channels and cap the ones you do not want
Google Ads is rolling out two settings worldwide. Channel prioritisation sorts a campaign’s channels into high priority and low priority. Google funds the high priority ones first, up to your targets, then spends what is left on the rest. Budget allocation then caps each low priority channel at a percentage of your daily budget. Set 5 percent against a R1,000 daily budget and that channel gets about R50 a day. Set 0 percent and it stops. Google calls these caps best effort rather than a guarantee. From February 2027 Google also removes the current spend allocation setup for Search campaigns running the Display Network.
Why this matters for your business: This is the first real control over where a Google campaign spends since Google started hiding the split. If your Search campaigns have been leaking budget into the Display Network or search partners, you can now cap it. Check whether the setting has reached your account, then set Display to low priority with a 50 percent allocation if you want to keep your current behaviour past February 2027.
Yoast 28.7 removes old code and one change can take a site down
Yoast released version 28.7 on 13 October. Most of it is a yearly clean up and most sites will not notice. One item deserves attention. If your theme or a plugin uses the wpseo_robots_array filter and returns anything other than an array, the site now throws a fatal error instead of a warning. Two older hooks, wpseo_opengraph and wpseo_twitter, are gone, along with the WPSEO_Frontend class.
Why this matters for your business: If anyone has written custom SEO behaviour into your theme, update Yoast on a staging copy first. A fatal error here takes the whole site down, not just the plugin. If nobody has touched your theme code, update as normal.
Automotive
Google is putting manufacturer vehicle ads above your listings
Google Ads has opened a beta called automotive model feeds, previously known as Vehicle Top Ads. A qualifying manufacturer supplies a feed of its range, and Google matches that feed to relevant searches, showing vehicle images, pricing and features alongside the manufacturer’s existing Search text ads. Supported markets at launch include the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Dealers do not qualify.
Why this matters for your dealership: You cannot buy this, which is exactly why it matters. On a search like a model name plus the word price, the manufacturer now gets a richer ad than you can buy, above your listing. Your answer is the part a manufacturer cannot supply, which is your actual stock, your actual price and your location. Put live stock counts, real prices and your trading area on your model landing pages, and watch your model name search terms.
What to do this week
- Check direct traffic to your interior pages since 9 October, and stop reporting the ChatGPT line as accurate
- Add a question to your enquiry forms asking how people found you
- Look for channel prioritisation in Google Ads, and diarise the February 2027 Display Network change
- Update Yoast on staging first if anyone has written custom code into your theme
- Audit your model landing pages for live stock, real pricing and a location
If you want a hand working out how much of your October traffic you can still trust, get in touch with us and we will go through it with you.
Sources
- OpenAI Drops UTM Parameters From ChatGPT Results, Search Engine Roundtable
- Google Search On URLs, Search Engine Roundtable
- Google Tests AI Mode Left Sidebar, Search Engine Roundtable
- WhatsApp Provides Chat Guest Links For Non Users, Social Media Today
- YouTube Rolls Out AI Search Chatbot To All US Users, Social Media Today
- New Google Ads Controls, Search Engine Roundtable
- Yoast SEO 28.7 Release Notes
- Google Ads Introduces Automotive Model Feeds, Search Engine Land