How to 'take advantage' of ChatGPT hallucinations

Many website owners are taking advantage of chatbot mistakes. Photo: Adobe Stock .

As AI becomes more and more popular, systems have to process massive amounts of information every second to produce results. Chatbots sometimes have a tendency to hallucinate and give out false information, including website addresses.

Gofish Digital analyzed over 18,000 visits from ChatGPT and found that for every 33 links the system provided, one was incorrect. Sometimes it was just a single character wrong, but other times the chatbot completely fabricated the URL.

As a result, website owners are starting to realize this, and are trying to take advantage of the confusing path to redirect traffic to their sites. They are implementing a variety of methods, including redesigning the 404 error page to explain the possible cause and provide relevant links. Another is generating content on the fly for the site, often with the help of AI tools themselves.

Jack Arturo, who runs WP Fusion, a WordPress plugin, has seen the impact of AI on his site’s traffic. He says ChatGPT accounted for less than 0.5% of traffic referrals in September 2024. “But if you look at the last 30 days, it’s third, actually second, behind Google, because it’s direct traffic,” he says.

Most of the traffic from the Arturo AI chatbot goes to live pages. But about 3 out of every 100 links are broken, leading to WP Fusion’s default 404 error page. This page simply says that an error occurred and the content couldn’t be found, and suggests the user try the on-page search engine.

Seeing that opportunity, Arturo built an AI-powered system that could generate content for the non-existent pages users were redirected to. He said we knew what they were looking for from the query, and wondered why not just generate that content for them.

A website owner redecorates an error page. Photo: X/Megabored.

The system took about an hour to set up, but Arturo believes it was a worthwhile investment as traffic is steadily increasing. “I think it’s worth taking the time to get it right, and we’ve open-sourced the system, so ideally we’ll have other people contribute,” he says.

SEO experts agree that adaptation is needed as AI chatbots become more integrated into everyday web browsing experiences. SEO expert Lily Ray suggests that website owners review their error pages to ensure they direct users to the content they were originally looking for.

“The best way to provide an optimal user experience (UX) on error pages is to provide a clear message that the content was not found, and include links to important pages on the site,” Ray shares. She also suggests integrating the site’s standard navigation bar into the error page template.

Arturo says that even AI companies may not fully understand how their models work, and may not be able to fix the problem immediately. So, as users replace Google search with chatbots, website owners should learn to adapt to this new technology.

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