Searchable tracked ChatGPT's answers to unbranded questions every day from 21 September to 24 October 2026, before and after GPT-6 reached free users

Key findings

More than six in ten ChatGPT answers (63%) now include a link to a website in the answer itself, up from fewer than one in ten (7%) before GPT-6 reached free users on 8 October.
More than one in five answers (23%) link straight to a brand's homepage, six times as often as before (4%), and three in ten (29%) link to a page deeper in a brand's website.
Half of answers (50%) link to other websites, such as directories, marketplaces and public bodies, up from 4%.

ChatGPT now links to a website in more than six in ten answers

More than six in ten ChatGPT answers (63%) to unbranded questions now include a link to a website in the answer itself. Before GPT-6, it was fewer than one in ten (7%), so answers now link out 8.5 times as often.

Most of the jump came in a single day. Between 21 September and 7 October, between 6% and 9% of answers carried a link each day. OpenAI rolled GPT-6 out to free ChatGPT users on 8 October, alongside a feature it calls Intelligent UI, which adds buttons and interactive elements to answers. Answers with a link went from 12% on 9 October to 51% on 10 October, and from 17 to 24 October the figure averaged 63%.

Searchable — Share of ChatGPT answers with a link to a website
Unbranded questions, daily, 21 September to 24 October 2026

The rise holds on a second, independent sample of answers, and it doesn't depend on any one company's questions.

Every type of website gets more links

The increase covers every kind of site ChatGPT links to. Half of answers (50%) now link to other websites, such as directories, marketplaces and public bodies, up from 4%. Three in ten (29%) link to a page deeper in a brand's website, up from 3%.

More than one in five answers (23%) link straight to a brand's homepage, six times as often as before (4%). Brands here are the companies tracked for that question and their named competitors.

What this means for brands

ChatGPT now links to a page deeper in a brand's website in more answers (29%) than it links to a homepage (23%). That puts more weight on the pages that answer a specific question, such as pricing, product and location pages. Details people ask about, like prices and opening times, belong on those pages in plain text.

For about a week after GPT-6 arrived, ChatGPT's links stopped carrying the utm_source=chatgpt.com tag that analytics tools use to credit a visit to ChatGPT, so those visits were counted as direct traffic. The tag came back from 16 October, but many ChatGPT visits still arrive without a referrer. Read ChatGPT traffic alongside direct traffic, especially on the pages ChatGPT links to.

For the websites ChatGPT cites most often, see our live ChatGPT citations report.

Methodology

Source: Searchable.com. Between 21 September and 24 October 2026, we analysed ChatGPT's answers to unbranded questions tracked by Searchable, to show how often each answer links to a website in the answer itself.

Answers were collected every day through the ChatGPT interface. Unbranded questions are those that don't name a brand. A link counts when a web address appears in the answer text, separately from the list of sources ChatGPT shows alongside it, and links that lead back into ChatGPT itself are not counted. Brand links go to the company tracked for that question or one of its named competitors; other websites are everything else. “Before” is the average from 21 September to 6 October, and “now” is 24 October. Internal and test accounts are excluded.

Sources for the context in this report

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