Given OpenAI’s shut relationship with Microsoft, many anticipate that ChatGPT’s retrieval-augmented era (RAG) course of would use Bing.
Nonetheless, over the previous months, some SEOs found that ChatGPT could have secretly pivoted to utilizing Google as an alternative.
These had been all one-off experiments. So, I questioned if it was attainable for us to search out out the ‘fact’ utilizing information as an alternative.
Right here’s what we discovered.
I requested our information scientist Xibeijia Guan for assist with this. Right here’s what she did:
- She pulled the precise search queries ChatGPT made (“fan-out queries”) and the URLs it returned from these searches. This information is from our Ahrefs Model Radar.
- She then ran these very same search queries by Google to see what URLs Google would return
- She measured how usually ChatGPT’s returned URLs appeared in Google’s prime 10, prime 20, and wherever in Google’s 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% of ChatGPT search outcomes are within the prime 10 of Google’s SERPs
- Solely 9.85% of ChatGPT search outcomes are within the prime 20 of Google’s SERPs
- Solely 16.61% of ChatGPT search outcomes are in Google’s SERPs.
If ChatGPT had been merely pulling from Google’s search outcomes, you’d anticipate a lot greater overlap. As an alternative, 83.39% of ChatGPT’s chosen outcomes don’t seem in Google’s search outcomes in any respect for a similar fan-out queries.
My colleague Louise additionally studied 15,000 prompts and located that on common, solely 12% of hyperlinks cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot seem in Google’s prime 10 outcomes for a similar immediate.
So, there’s no clear indication that ChatGPT is solely or predominantly utilizing Google as their search engine.
ChatGPT seemingly makes use of a hybrid strategy the place they retrieve search outcomes from varied sources, e.g. Google SERPs, Bing SERPs, their very own index, and third-party search APIs, after which mix all of the URLs and apply their very own re-ranking algorithm.
Remaining ideas
ChatGPT doesn’t seem like “secretly Google-powered.” As an alternative, it appears to make use of a complicated multi-source strategy.
This is sensible from a product perspective.
OpenAI seemingly needs to cut back dependence on any single search supplier whereas optimizing for his or her particular use case: offering correct, contextual solutions reasonably than common internet discovery.
Any questions or feedback? Let me know on LinkedIn.
