Why ChatGPT Links Get Zero Clicks (Even Top Results)
▼ Summary
– A leaked file reveals OpenAI tracks ChatGPT user interactions with publisher links, showing high impressions but extremely low click-through rates.
– ChatGPT displays links in multiple areas including main responses, sidebars, citations, and search results, with detailed metrics for each placement.
– Link placement performance varies significantly, with main responses having high impressions but minimal clicks while sidebar/citations show higher CTR percentages.
– The data indicates ChatGPT visibility cannot replace traditional organic search traffic, as AI-driven traffic remains minimal and behaves differently.
– The leaked information was shared by Vincent Terrasi, CTO of Draft & Goal, providing insights into ChatGPT’s publisher link performance metrics.
A recently leaked internal document from OpenAI provides a startling look at user engagement with publisher links displayed within ChatGPT, revealing that these links receive almost no clicks despite being shown millions of times. The data exposes a significant gap between link visibility and actual user interaction, challenging the notion that AI platforms can serve as a primary source of referral traffic.
The numbers paint a clear picture. For one high-performing webpage, the document recorded a massive 610,775 total instances where a link was shown to users. However, this resulted in only 4,238 total clicks, producing an overall click-through rate of a mere 0.69%. The best-performing individual page managed a CTR of 1.68%, while many others languished at rates as low as 0.01%, 0.1%, or even a flat zero.
The leaked file offers a granular breakdown of how ChatGPT presents links and how users respond. It meticulously tracks data across a specific date range, including publisher details like name and URL. Crucially, it measures impressions and clicks across several distinct areas within the ChatGPT interface: the main response, the sidebar, citations, search results, and other navigational features. The document also calculates the CTR for each of these specific display zones and provides a total for all surfaces combined.
The location of a link within ChatGPT dramatically influences its performance. The most prominent placement, the main response area, generates a huge number of impressions but an extremely tiny click-through rate. In contrast, links that appear in the sidebar and citation sections see far fewer impressions but achieve a significantly higher CTR, typically in the range of 6% to 10%. Links shown in search results within the platform registered almost no impressions and consequently zero clicks.
For marketers and publishers, this information is critical. Anyone hoping that visibility in ChatGPT might compensate for declining organic traffic from traditional search engines will find this data sobering. While traffic from AI sources is indeed growing, it currently represents only a small fraction of overall web traffic. More importantly, user behavior on AI platforms like ChatGPT is fundamentally different and unlikely to ever mirror the click-through patterns seen with traditional organic search results. The data suggests that users are primarily engaging with the AI’s generated answer directly, with little incentive to leave the platform to visit an external source.
This confidential data was made public by Vincent Terrasi, the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of the company Draft & Goal.
(Source: Search Engine Land)
