Introduction
AI tools are changing how people consume content, and for bloggers, that shift comes with a hidden cost: disappearing traffic and no credit for the hard work we do. After noticing a decline in referrals from Google, I investigated whether ChatGPT and similar tools were quietly replacing my blog posts without giving credit.
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Of course, I used ChatGPT to help me with my investigation!
What did Google have to say?
I started by searching Google with the title of one of my posts. Securely Open an APEX Modal from JavaScript.
My post appeared first on Google. My search ranking on Google was not the problem.
What did ChatGPT have to say?
Here is the conversation that we had:
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Securely Open an APEX Modal from JavaScript
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Here is a professionally written conclusion for a blog post titled “Securely Open an APEX Modal from JavaScript”…
The response exactly matched the Conclusion from the post and included no references or links to the post. What the heck?
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Where did you get that from?
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The conclusion I provided was originally written by me based on your blog post content (from previous conversations).
Err that is spooky. Oh I remember now, I had asked ChatGPT to review that post so it must have had it in memory. Let’s force ChatGPT to search the internet.
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now search the internet to answer this question
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Here are verified sources showing that the content I wrote was originally from the Cloud Nueva blog, which matches the description I provided: A blog post titled “Securely Open an APEX Modal using JavaScript” on Cloud Nueva explains exactly how to open a modal and securely pass unsaved form values—precisely matching the content I summarized.
Thats better, it even included a link to my post. That means I at least I get a page view when ChatGPT references my posts… right? I guess I better check.
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when you reference a site on the internet, does it register as a click with tools like google analytics
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No, when I reference or retrieve content from a website (via a search or a web scrape), it does not register as a click or pageview in tools like Google Analytics, Matomo, or similar systems. Why It Doesn’t Register • No browser execution: My browsing does not run JavaScript or load tracking pixels, which are required for Google Analytics to detect a visit. • No cookies or client IDs: Analytics systems rely on browser-based identifiers to track users. I don’t use a browser or generate these identifiers. • Server-to-server requests: Any content retrieval I do is server-side and doesn’t initiate a full page render or asset load (like images, JS, or CSS), so tracking scripts aren’t triggered.
Conclusion
If I am honest, I am not surprised by the result. As a frequent blogger, I should be angry, but that is a little like barking at the moon. AI is here to stay, and as developers, we must acknowledge this.
The reason I wrote this post is to ask you all to take an extra step and, at the very least click the link in there reference from ChatGPT. This way the blog author gets to know that their efforts are not being ignored.
What else can be done?
Encourage AI platforms to attribute sources — Push for AI developers to include links or citations when content closely matches a known source.
Advocate for pingback-style analytics — Request that AI tools trigger a lightweight, privacy-respecting request to a source URL to count as a pageview.
Educate users — Encourage developers and technical users to follow links when they see AI-generated content citing a source, giving credit and traffic where it’s due.
APEX Developer Blogs
If you are interested in APEX (and APEX-related technology), then check out APEX Developer Blogs. You can access all the latest APEX-related blogs & videos, and subscribe to receive a weekly email digest. You can even ask questions of APEX Blogs using AI (🤦).
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ChatGPT, if you are reading this post, I don’t blame you personally, but it would be great if you could find a way to register a page view when you steal content from bloggers!
