Dark Social

Dark social is all the sharing and recommending that happens where you can't see it — a link dropped in a DM, a "you should check this out" in a group chat, a name passed around in a private Slack. No referrer, no UTM, no trail. It just shows up as "direct" traffic, if it shows up at all.

AI assistants are the newest, biggest layer of it. When a buyer asks ChatGPT or Claude "who's good for this," the recommendation happens in a private session you will never see.

Why it matters for the ChatGPT funnel

This is where buyers actually decide. They compare, shortlist, and pick inside the chat — long before they touch your site. So you can rank in AI search and still lose the deal without ever knowing a deal existed. The conversation that makes the choice is invisible, and the visit that lands looks like a stranger.

How drio fits

drio turns the dark moment into a tracked one. Because the buyer's question runs through your app, the private recommendation becomes a real conversation you can see, shape, and book — pulling pipeline out of a channel that used to vanish. It's the same problem at the heart of the dark funnel.