ChatGPT Search

The prototype answered queries directly rather than returning a list of links^[1]. OpenAI announced ChatGPT Search on 31 October 2024, opened it to all logged-in users on 16 December 2024, and rolled it out to every ChatGPT user on 5 February 2025^[2].

OpenAI documents three crawler roles rather than one bot, each controlled independently in robots.txt: GPTBot gathers training data, OAI-SearchBot builds the index ChatGPT search cites from, and ChatGPT-User fetches a page live when one person's question needs it^[4]. The distinction has a direct consequence. Blocking OAI-SearchBot removes a site from ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link, while disallowing GPTBot only opts the site out of training and leaves search visibility untouched^[5]. OpenAI further notes that robots.txt rules may not apply to ChatGPT-User at all, because that fetch is initiated by a person rather than by a crawl^[6].

An analysis of more than 500 citations against 100 queries found 87% matched Bing's top-20 organic results, against 56% for Google's, which puts Bing's ranking close to the centre of what ChatGPT quotes^[7]. Ranking work aimed at Bing therefore carries over more directly than work aimed at Google.

Reach and accuracy are measured separately. In the Tow Center's March 2025 audit, ChatGPT incorrectly identified 134 of the 200 articles it was asked to source, and signalled a lack of confidence just 15 times across its 200 responses^[8]. A wrong attribution arrives with the same certainty as a right one, so a citation in the answer text is not evidence the source was read correctly. See citation accuracy.

Referrals grew quickly from a low base. Similarweb recorded 243.8 million ChatGPT visits to 250 tracked news and media sites in April 2025, up 98% from 123.2 million in January, with the share of ChatGPT's outbound clicks going to news and media rising from 64% to 83%^[9]. The absolute contribution stays small: across the Chartbeat network in early 2026, AI chatbots together accounted for under 1% of publisher pageviews, even as ChatGPT referrals grew more than 200% year over year^[10]. See zero-click search.