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 have been all one-off experiments. So, I questioned if it was doable for us to search out out the ‘reality’ utilizing knowledge as an alternative.
Right here’s what we discovered.
I requested our knowledge 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 knowledge is from our Ahrefs Model Radar.
- She then ran these very same search queries via Google to see what URLs Google would return
- She measured how typically ChatGPT’s returned URLs appeared in Google’s high 10, high 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 high 10 of Google’s SERPs
- Solely 9.85% of ChatGPT search outcomes are within the high 20 of Google’s SERPs
- Solely 16.61% of ChatGPT search outcomes are in Google’s SERPs.
If ChatGPT have been merely pulling from Google’s search outcomes, you’d anticipate a lot larger 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 high 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 numerous 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.
Ultimate ideas
ChatGPT doesn’t seem like “secretly Google-powered.” As an alternative, it appears to make use of a classy multi-source strategy.
This is sensible from a product perspective.
OpenAI seemingly desires to cut back dependence on any single search supplier whereas optimizing for his or her particular use case: offering correct, contextual solutions reasonably than basic internet discovery.
Any questions or feedback? Let me know on LinkedIn.
