Why does traffic from ChatGPT show up as direct in my analytics?

A visit is filed as direct when it arrives with no referrer and no campaign tags. AI assistant clicks often look like that. Some apps and in-app browsers do not pass the referring page, redirects can drop it on the way, and a visitor who copies a link from an answer into a new tab is a direct visit by definition. When a referrer does arrive, many analytics tools group the assistant's domain under generic referral unless you add a rule. ChatGPT links sometimes carry a utm_source tag, but not always, and what each assistant passes can change without notice. You will not recover every visit, but a custom channel that matches assistant referrers and UTM sources pulls out the ones that are identifiable. Linkrunner's Web SDK (beta) applies that classification for you, as a separate AI traffic class. How to track each AI assistant separately: https://linkrunner.io/blog/track-ai-assistant-traffic-to-your-website