I run a tech publication. I write about AI, software, and digital trends. But here’s the embarrassing truth: when my own website started malfunctioning, I had no idea how to fix it.
It started innocently enough. I noticed strange buttons appearing across my site. “Discover more” links that seemed to point to… nothing. They looked clickable, professional even, but they didn’t lead anywhere. Not to other pages on my site. Not to external resources. Just dead ends dressed up as navigation.
At first, I thought maybe it was a theme update gone wrong. Or a plugin conflict. You know, the usual WordPress drama. But when these phantom buttons started multiplying across my homepage and article pages, I knew I had a real problem.
The ChatGPT Detour
Like most people in 2024, my first instinct was to ask ChatGPT. I spent days going back and forth. “Check your theme settings,” it suggested. I did. Nothing. “Disable plugins one by one,” it offered. I tried that too. Still nothing.
ChatGPT kept giving me generic troubleshooting steps that felt copied from a 2015 WordPress forum. It wasn’t understanding the actual problem. It was just pattern-matching my description to common website issues.
The worst part? Every response sounded confident. ChatGPT never said “I’m not sure” or “let’s dig deeper.” It just kept suggesting things that didn’t work, and I kept wasting time implementing them.
After three days of this, I was frustrated, exhausted, and no closer to a solution.
The Breakthrough
That’s when I switched to Claude. I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect much. I figured all AI tools were essentially the same under the hood. But I was desperate.
The difference was immediate. Instead of jumping straight to solutions, Claude asked me to describe exactly what I was seeing. Then it asked me to right-click one of these mystery buttons and inspect the element.
I sent Claude the HTML code from the browser inspector. Within minutes, Claude identified something I’d completely missed: the buttons were being injected by Google AdSense Auto Ads.
Wait, what? My own ad network was creating fake navigation elements on my site?
Apparently, yes. AdSense’s Auto Ads feature has a “search ads” option that automatically generates contextual links based on your content. In theory, it’s supposed to blend seamlessly. In practice, on my site at least, it was creating clickable-looking buttons that went nowhere and confused the hell out of my visitors.
The Solution
Claude walked me through the fix step by step. Go to Google AdSense settings. Find Auto Ads. Uncheck “search ads.” Save changes.
That was it. No theme reinstallation. No plugin debugging. And no messing with code I barely understood.
Of course, Google being Google, the changes took about 24 hours to fully propagate. Something about cache and memory, which honestly I still don’t fully understand. But the next day, the phantom buttons were gone.
What This Experience Taught Me About AI
Here’s what surprised me most: this wasn’t about one AI being “smarter” than another. It was about approach.
ChatGPT treated my problem like a FAQ. It matched keywords from my description to common solutions and threw them at me one by one. It never really understood what was happening on my site.
Claude took a diagnostic approach. It asked questions. It requested specific information. And it analyzed the actual code. It treated troubleshooting like a process, not a database lookup.
This matters more than you’d think. As more people turn to AI for technical help, we’re learning that not all AI tools are interchangeable. The way they’re trained, the way they reason, the way they interact with you actually makes a huge difference in real-world problem-solving.
Practical Takeaways
If you’re using AI to solve technical problems, here’s what I learned:
Start specific. Don’t just describe the symptom. Share actual error messages, code snippets, or screenshots when possible. AI tools work better with concrete data.
Be ready to switch. If one tool isn’t working after a few attempts, try another. I wasted days being loyal to ChatGPT when Claude could have solved it in hours.
Use the right tool for the task. ChatGPT is great for brainstorming and general information. But for technical debugging, I’ve found Claude’s systematic approach more effective.
Don’t trust confidence. An AI sounding certain doesn’t mean it’s right. Both tools were confident. Only one was actually helpful.
The Bigger Picture
This experience made me think about where we are with AI right now. We’re past the “wow, it can write” phase. We’re entering the “okay, but can it actually help me solve real problems” phase.
The answer is yes, but with caveats. AI tools are incredibly powerful, but they’re not magic. They have different strengths. They make different kinds of mistakes. And they require you to be an active participant in the problem-solving process, not just a passive recipient of solutions.
As someone who writes about technology for a living, I’m supposed to understand this stuff. But this experience humbled me. It reminded me that even people who work in tech every day can feel lost when things break. And it showed me that having the right tools, used the right way, can make all the difference.
My site is fixed now. Those phantom buttons are gone. And I’ve learned a valuable lesson about both AI limitations and AI potential.
The future of troubleshooting probably involves AI. But it’s not about replacing human judgment. It’s about combining AI’s pattern recognition with human context and critical thinking.
That’s where the real power lies.
