You might have seen Richard Millington’s recent article about declining search traffic and why it doesn’t necessarily mean your community is losing value.
He introduces the idea of “ghost solutions” — when people find their answers from your community directly in Google search results, without ever visiting the site. The helpful content is still doing its job, it’s just being consumed differently.
So instead of asking “why is traffic down?”, the real question becomes: “how do we measure the value that’s still being delivered?”
âś… Try This in Vanilla
If you want to start understanding the “ghost value” your community is providing:
- Set up Google Search Console
Make sure your community is verified so you can track impressions and see how often your content appears in search results — even when people don’t click through.
👉 Verify your site with Google Search Console - Review search referral trends in Vanilla Analytics
Compare your search-driven visits with impression data from Search Console. If impressions are steady but visits are falling, that’s your signal that people are still getting value — they’re just getting it faster, straight from search.
đź“Š Bonus: Track UTM Source Data in Vanilla Analytics
- See how many posts are being viewed from each UTM source — great for understanding which platforms are driving discovery.
→ For example, you might filter by utm_source = chatgpt.com to see how many views are coming directly from ChatGPT.
You can also see trends over time:
- Identify which posts or landing pages people arrive on from ChatGPT (or any source) — this helps you see what content is getting surfaced most often by AI tools or search engines.
Here are all pageviews by URL:
Just community posts:
Don't forget KB articles!
You can use this technique to get all kinds of other data, like who is landing on community from chatgpt:
This kind of visibility helps you tell a richer story: not just who’s clicking, but where those clicks originate and what content is carrying the most influence beyond your community walls.
I've just done this with ChatGPT but check out what other things you find in your UTM Sources and you can dig around from there and find yourself down a very interesting rabbit hole!
đź’¬ What do you think?
Have you started seeing ChatGPT or AI-generated traffic in your own analytics?
How are you adjusting your reporting to capture the “ghost” value your community is creating?
Drop your insights below — we’d love to compare notes and ideas! 👇
