If you’ve been digging through your Ahrefs reports and spotted a ChatGPT citation for your WordPress site, you might be wondering…
“Hang on — I’ve never talked about my site in ChatGPT. How did it get there?”
The good news: it’s probably nothing to worry about. And in many cases, it has nothing to do with private conversations in ChatGPT at all.
What Ahrefs Means by a ChatGPT Citation
Ahrefs is now tracking mentions of websites in AI-generated content. This doesn’t mean ChatGPT itself is storing or publishing private chats — instead, Ahrefs finds these citations in publicly available content that’s either:
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Created by ChatGPT and posted somewhere online, or
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Structured specifically so AI tools can understand your site.
The WordPress / Yoast Connection
If your site uses Yoast SEO, it may automatically generate a special file called llms.json (short for “Large Language Model Schema”).
This file gives AI tools like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and others structured information about your site — things like your name, description, and URL. It’s there to help AI better understand your brand if it comes across it.
Because this file is public and designed for AI consumption, Ahrefs can pick it up and list it as a ChatGPT citation — even if no human has typed your domain into ChatGPT.
How to Check If You Have It
You can see if this applies to you by visiting:
https://yourdomain.com/llms.json
If the page loads a block of code with your site info, that’s it — that’s your “ChatGPT mention” source.
Should You Be Concerned?
Not at all. This isn’t exposing anything private — it’s simply another way search and AI tools are indexing your site. In fact, it could even be a positive, since it makes your site more discoverable to AI assistants.
In Short
- It’s not ChatGPT reading your private conversations.
- It is Ahrefs seeing your site in AI-friendly data (like Yoast’s llms.json).
- You can check and confirm in seconds.
If you’d like help making the most of this AI visibility and ensuring your WordPress site is optimised for both search engines and AI tools, get in touch — I can help you make sure you’re found in all the right places. Ask us for help here
