Using ChatGPT to investigate technical errors

I had a huge volume of 404 errors being triggered on my website. I didn't know how to investigate what pages were triggering them. Without AI, this would have involved considerable research and trial and error, or I would have had to undertake specific training, or would have had to commission work from my website agency.

With ChatGPT, I got it to teach me how to build an Exploration in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) that would give me the information I needed, what settings to add to my Redirection plugin on the website to get an additional dataset about this, and then to interpret the GA4 results. This led me to understand how certain 404s were being triggered. I then got it to teach me how to put in different types of redirects to address specific problems that would reduce the number of 404 triggers. This required me to carefully take in what it said, as sometimes it would contradict itself and I had to check that what it was telling me to do was actually necessary – which wasn’t always the case. I have since reduced the number of 404 errors being triggered on the website by 85% because of this work.

For anyone using GenAI, don't be afraid to ask it to teach you how to use it.