On August 13, industry analyst Glenn Gabe noticed something quietly different in ChatGPT. The Sources button, which usually sits in plain view under a response, was gone for some conversations. To see citations now, you click a three-dot "More actions" menu, then click "View sources." The citation list still exists. Reaching it takes an extra click that most users will never make.
What actually changed
OpenAI has announced nothing. What is known comes from Gabe's screenshots and a Search Engine Roundtable writeup published the morning of August 13. Some conversations still show sources immediately under the response, same as before. Others tuck the list into the overflow menu. This is a test or a staged rollout, not a confirmed permanent change.
Gabe, writing on X: "I've noticed ChatGPT not providing a visible link to view sources. You have to click the overflow menu and then click view sources. That can definitely decrease visibility and clicks for citations that show up in the right-side panel."
Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz, who documented the change, noted the new path requires users to "click more to find those sources," which "very few will do."
Why move it at all? Gabe wonders whether the goal is to focus user attention on the ads now appearing in ChatGPT responses. That is his speculation, not a confirmed motive. OpenAI has said nothing public.
Why the placement change matters more than it looks
A citation used to be one fact: your site, listed under the answer, visible to anyone who read the response. It is now two facts with the same name.
Cited in the open still functions the way citation always has. Cited behind the overflow menu exists in the data and almost nowhere else. A monitoring tool that records only "cited, yes or no" cannot tell the difference. For measurement, the difference is most of the story.
Three concrete implications follow.
1. The answer text is now the visible layer. If few users open the source panel, the answer itself is where attention lands. Being named and described accurately inside the answer is worth more than a listing almost no one opens. That lines up with Search Engine Journal's analysis of 60 ChatGPT conversations: the model writes brand names into its own search queries before it retrieves anything, and landing on that shortlist is worth roughly 33 times more than being merely findable. Read: [ChatGPT Decides Who to Recommend Before It Searches](https://parceit.com/blog/chatgpt-decides-who-to-recommend-before-it-searches).
2. Citation click attribution gets weaker. Citation-driven referral traffic was already a narrow channel. An extra click that most users skip shrinks the signal further. Anyone modeling AI search value from citation clicks just inherited more noise.
3. Raw counts need context to stay meaningful. The raw count still increments correctly. What breaks is the interpretation. A citation count without placement context now overstates the typical citation's real-world visibility.
What to do this week
Check your own ChatGPT. Run a handful of buyer-type prompts and note where sources appear. The rollout is not uniform, so what you see today may not match what you saw last week, or what your customers see.
Keep counting citations, with placement recorded. Every citation falls into one of four categories: cited inline, cited in the open panel, cited behind the overflow menu, or merely mentioned. That single field turns a stale number into a usable measurement. It is also something most prompt-list tools cannot capture, because they never render the interface at all.
Earning a clear, accurate mention inside the answer matters more than adding another listing to the sources panel. A user who never opens the panel still reads every word of the answer, so that is where your brand either reads well or goes missing. Our [guide to getting cited by ChatGPT](https://parceit.com/blog/how-to-get-cited-by-chatgpt) covers the mechanics.
The bottom line
The citation did not disappear. It moved somewhere most users will not go. A citation you cannot see influences nobody, and a measurement that cannot tell hidden from visible is not measuring much. Start recording where each citation actually appears, and give the answer text the attention the sources panel is losing.
FAQ
Did OpenAI remove citations from ChatGPT? No. The sources list still exists and still opens in the right-side panel. For some conversations, the button that opens it now lives inside the three-dot "More actions" menu. OpenAI has not announced the change; it was documented by Glenn Gabe on August 13 and reported by Search Engine Roundtable.
Is the change permanent? Unknown. Some conversations still show sources immediately. This looks like a test or staged rollout, and OpenAI has made no public statement.
Should brands stop tracking citations? No. Citations still correlate with presence, and the panel still gets some traffic. The fix is recording placement context alongside the count so the number stays interpretable as the interface shifts.
Sources: Search Engine Roundtable, "OpenAI Makes ChatGPT Sources Less Visible," August 13, 2026. Glenn Gabe on X, August 13, 2026.