Given the shut relationship with Microsoft with Openai, many individuals count on that the ChatGpt searched era (RAG) course of will use Bing.
Nevertheless, over the previous few months, Some seos I discovered it That chatgpt might have secretly pivoted to utilizing Google as an alternative.
All of those had been one-off experiments. So I questioned if I might use the info as an alternative to search out the “fact”.
That is what we discovered.
We requested knowledge scientist Xibeiijia Guan to assist with this. Here is what she did:
- She pulled out the precise search queries created by ChatGpt (“fanout queries”) and the URLs returned from these searches. This knowledge is from Ahrefs branded radar.
- She then ran these very same search queries by way of Google to see what Google returns
- She measured how typically ChatGpt returned URLs appeared anyplace in Google’s high 10, high 20, and Google search outcomes.
On common, CHATGPT pulls 1.78 search queries per immediate, with 75% of prompts triggering precisely two searches.
On common:
- solely 6.82% Chatgpt search outcomes are within the high 10 SERPs on Google
- solely 9.85% Chatgpt search outcomes are within the high 20 SERPs on Google
- solely 16.61% The outcomes for ChatGPT will be discovered on Google’s SERP.
If ChatGpt was merely pulling from Google’s search outcomes, then we count on the overlap to be a lot larger. As an alternative, 83.39% Chosen outcomes for CHATGPT will not be displayed in Google search outcomes in any respect for a similar fanout question.
My colleague Louise additionally studied 15,000 prompts and on common found it. Only 12% of the links cited by ChatGpt, Gemini, and Copilot are shown in Google’s top 10 results for the same prompt.
So there is no clear indication that ChatGpt is only or mainly Use Google as your search engine.
CHATGPT may use a hybrid approach that retrieves search results from a variety of sources, including Google Serp, Bing Serp, its own index, third-party search APIs, and combines all URLs to apply their own reranking algorithms.
Final thoughts
ChatGpt doesn’t look “secretly Google-driven.” Instead, it appears to use a sophisticated multi-source approach.
This makes sense from a product perspective.
Openai wants to reduce reliance on a single search provider while optimizing specific use cases. It provides accurate and contextual answers rather than general web discovery.
Do you have any questions or comments? Please let me know LinkedIn.
