OpenAI just announced visual ads that appear next to images people generate in ChatGPT, starting in the US later this month. The businesses most likely to care are the ones whose customers already find them through ChatGPT. So what do those websites have in common? A common guess is backlinks: links from other websites, the same signal Google has rewarded for years. Diib’s data doesn’t support that guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diib looked at websites with Google Analytics connected and checked their top five referral sources between August 1 and October 5, 2026. 1,600 of about 55,600 websites (2.9%)<\/strong> had ChatGPT among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Traffic mattered more. About 1% of sites with under 1,000 visits had ChatGPT as a top referrer, compared with roughly 5% of sites with 5,000 or more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is aggregated Diib data from websites with connected analytics. It only counts ChatGPT when it ranked among a site’s top five referral sources, so smaller amounts of ChatGPT traffic are missed. It shows a pattern, not a cause. Diib can’t see what people asked ChatGPT before they clicked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Websites with ChatGPT among their top referral sources looked stronger on links at first glance. Compared with sites that get similar traffic, the gap almost disappears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"insight_format":"Platform update","insight_takeaway":"If you've been told you need a pile of new backlinks before ChatGPT will send you customers, Diib's data doesn't back that up. Among sites with similar traffic, the ones already getting ChatGPT visitors had about the same link strength as everyone else. Having real, steady traffic tracked more closely with ChatGPT referrals than links did.","insight_action":"In Google Analytics, open the Traffic acquisition report (under Reports, then Acquisition), filter the session source to chatgpt.com, and see which pages those visitors land on. Make sure each of those pages says plainly what you do, where you do it and how to reach you.","insight_source_url":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/10\/05\/openai-launches-visual-ads-that-appear-alongside-image-generation-results\/","insight_read_time":"","insight_featured":"0"},"insight_industry":[33],"insight_topic":[49],"class_list":["post-373","insight","type-insight","status-publish","hentry","insight_industry-general-business","insight_topic-ai-search"],"acf":{"insight_format":"Platform update","insight_takeaway":"If you've been told you need a pile of new backlinks before ChatGPT will send you customers, Diib's data doesn't back that up. Among sites with similar traffic, the ones already getting ChatGPT visitors had about the same link strength as everyone else. Having real, steady traffic tracked more closely with ChatGPT referrals than links did.","insight_action":"In Google Analytics, open the Traffic acquisition report (under Reports, then Acquisition), filter the session source to chatgpt.com, and see which pages those visitors land on. Make sure each of those pages says plainly what you do, where you do it and how to reach you.","insight_source_url":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/10\/05\/openai-launches-visual-ads-that-appear-alongside-image-generation-results\/","insight_read_time":"","insight_featured":false},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\tVisits, Aug\u2013Sep 2026<\/th> Median DA: ChatGPT referrals<\/th> Median DA: no ChatGPT referrals<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> Under 1,000<\/td> 12<\/td> 10<\/td><\/tr> 1,000\u20135,000<\/td> 14<\/td> 15<\/td><\/tr> 5,000\u201320,000<\/td> 19<\/td> 19<\/td><\/tr> 20,000+<\/td> 24<\/td> 25<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n What this does and doesn’t tell you<\/h2>\n\n\n\n