ChatGPT sent more visitors than Google.
An ACT practice site we built and run. Here is what moved, what fell, and where each number comes from.
74
Visits from ChatGPT between September 16 and October 23, 2026. They came from 24 visitors, and there were none before. Google search sent 9 over the whole period.
Source: Google Analytics 4 for prep36.com, sessions whose source is chatgpt.com, July 13 to October 23, 2026, pulled October 24, 2026.
The situation.
Prep36 is an AdMax venture with two partners, not a paying client. We built the site and run its marketing. It went live on a new domain in July 2026 with no history in search. On September 21, Search Console listed no links to it from other sites.
What we did.
- July 30
- Sent www to the main address, added security headers, and wrote a robots.txt that invites AI assistants, ChatGPT's among them, to read the site.
- August 4
- Found our SEO tool had applied none of its fixes, because one step was never run. We ran it, and they went live.
- August 5
- Brought the site back after about three days offline. The registrar had held the domain because a contact email was never verified. That was our mistake. Then we pinged IndexNow so the engines would recrawl.
- August 6
- Removed claims the product did not back up from more than 30 pages. The worst one promised more free timed tests than the site had.
- August 8 to September 14
- Wrote guide pages: ACT scores by college, practice by topic, and what each score means. There are 108 now.
- September 21
- Found Google had not read the sitemap since July 30, so it had seen 28 of its 114 pages. We resubmitted it. We also tested a planned batch of about 1,111 templated pages. They repeated each other, so we did not publish them.
What happened.
- ChatGPT. 74 visits from 24 visitors, all in the United States. 53 were engaged visits.
- Other search engines. Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo sent 40 visits from the US. IndexNow pings reach Bing, which may be part of why. We cannot prove it.
- Indexing. Google had indexed 30 pages on September 21. On October 24 it had 62.
- The whole site. From July 13 to 31, none of 137 visits came from search engines or ChatGPT. From October 1 to 23, 85 of 307 did, counting the US only.
Visits per month, and where they came from.
Prep36, every visit counted by Google Analytics. October counts the 1st to the 23rd.
- From search engines and ChatGPT, US only
- All other visits
See the numbers
| Month | From search engines and ChatGPT, US only | All other visits | All visits |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 13 to 31 | 0 | 137 | 137 |
| August | 1 | 64 | 65 |
| September | 37 | 100 | 137 |
| October 1 to 23 | 85 | 222 | 307 |
What did not work.
- Google showed the site, then almost stopped. Search Console counted 651 impressions from September 1 to 26 and 30 from September 27 to October 22. Most of September's came from the college score pages. We do not know why yet.
- Google sent 9 visits in total. Search Console counts 8 clicks in three months.
- Average position is no longer our headline. It moved from 47.7 on August 19 to 27.6 on September 21, but it now averages very few searches.
- The ChatGPT numbers are small, and visitors repeat. Six visitors made 10 of the 74 visits, on October 21 and 22. Only one of the 74 started on a guide page, so the guides are not clearly the reason, and we cannot see which answer named the site. We had no filter for our own visits.
- Most visits still come in directly. 193 of 307 in October so far. Instagram lands there too, since the profile has no link.
- 52 pages are still not indexed.
- We cannot tie any of this to a sale. Our reporting cannot see payments yet.
ChatGPT visits and Google impressions, per week.
Full weeks, Monday to Sunday, July 27 to October 18, 2026. Each panel has its own scale, both start at zero.
Visits from ChatGPT
Google Analytics 4, sessions whose source is chatgpt.com. The first one came on September 16.
How often Google showed the site in search results
Google Search Console, impressions in web search, read in the browser on October 24, 2026.
See the numbers
| Week starting | Visits from ChatGPT | Times Google showed the site |
|---|---|---|
| July 27 | 0 | 26 |
| August 3 | 0 | 89 |
| August 10 | 0 | 93 |
| August 17 | 0 | 86 |
| August 24 | 0 | 111 |
| August 31 | 0 | 130 |
| September 7 | 0 | 160 |
| September 14 | 12 | 210 |
| September 21 | 8 | 180 |
| September 28 | 13 | 9 |
| October 5 | 16 | 9 |
| October 12 | 12 | 6 |
What we would do next.
Check each college page in Search Console before writing anything new.
Earn first links from schools, counselors and libraries, saying plainly that we built it.
Send ChatGPT visitors to pages we can measure, and filter out our own visits.
Connect payments to reporting, so traffic is judged by sales.
Method.
Google Analytics 4 for prep36.com, July 13 to October 23, 2026; ChatGPT means sessions from chatgpt.com in any channel (64 AI Assistant, 10 Referral); Search Console read in the browser on October 24; 18 search visits from outside the US left out. Prep36 is not affiliated with ACT, Inc.
