In short
Internal links copied from ChatGPT answers carried ?utm_source=chatgpt.com, so my site was linking to tagged copies of its own pages.
What I did
Where
My own website, June 2026
What changed
I removed the tag from every internal link and searched the rest of the content for similar leftovers. Search Console never listed a tagged address, before or after, so the harm was in the links themselves, not in Google's index.
What you should do
Search your content for utm_source, chatgpt.com and other tracking tags. Your own internal links should always use the clean address.
How long it took
About an hour
A tracking tag is the part after a question mark in a link, such as utm_source. It tells analytics tools where a visit came from.
Why it matters
ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it shows. If you copy those links into your own pages, your site links to a tagged copy of its own article. Google may treat that as a separate address, and the tag also shows plainly where the text came from.
How to check your own site
- Search your posts for utm_source. Many SEO plugins and site crawlers can do this.
- Replace each tagged link with the plain address of the page.
At a glance
11of my articles linked with the tag
22tagged internal links
0tagged addresses in Search Console, before or after
What this changed in how I work
Text copied from an AI tool can carry hidden tracking tags. I now check every link in pasted content before it goes live.
End of Lab entry No. 066
- Two new pages got zero impressions for five weeks, because nothing on the site linked to them6 Nov 2026
- Six of my pages took turns for my main searches, and the page built for them was shown twice5 Nov 2026
- My new article was not indexed for two weeks. Schema did not fix it. Links and one indexing request did.It worked26 Oct 2026
- I added 966 internal links to a site where most pages had never been seen. The lift did not last.Mixed result25 Oct 2026