ChatGPT Search: Google Kingslayer?

Rory Hope -

ChatGPT Search has launched and the search landscape won’t be the same again. OpenAI has integrated SearchGPT into ChatGPT as ChatGPT Search, offering a powerful AI search alternative to Google. 

On October 31st, OpenAI announced that with ChatGPT Search, users can “get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for.”

Here are details about the launch:

  • Search will now be available with ChatGPT paid accounts, and free accounts in the coming months
  • This will allow users to get real-time information in response to their searches, something that wasn’t possible on ChatGPT before
  • Users can ask a question in a natural, conversational way
  • The interface will encourage follow up questions to refine searches 
  • Answers will include links to sources, with a links panel available on desktop
  • The search model is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, and combines data from third-party search providers with content provided from OpenAI’s news industry partnerships — like Reuters and the FT.

So with ChatGPT Search’s availability will search behaviour change and how should marketers respond? SearchGPT is only available in the ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise and Education accounts right now – with availability rolling out across free accounts in “the coming months” so this limits the immediate impact for businesses.

The Neuron explained this new value proposition, “ChatGPT’s Achilles’ heel compared to Google has always been that you couldn’t search for live info (that Bing plugin was a flop...). Now you can… and it’s really good.”

I think that in the short-term ChatGPT users who have established new habits using the app to search for information online instead of using a traditional search engine like Google, it’s likely these users will expand their usage of ChatGPT to find information online.

I also expect that the integration of SearchGPT into ChatGPT will lead to a measurable increase in the amount of referral traffic that websites receive from OpenAI over the course of the next 6 to 12 months as more users adopt the app instead of Google.

The Verge makes a compelling argument that reinforces this hypothesis, “that’s one clear reason a user might choose ChatGPT over Google Search: there’s no clutter of advertising or promoted queries pinned to the top. While Google makes a lot of money off advertising in search results, Fry said there are currently “no plans” for advertising in ChatGPT. “

The ability to access real-time search directly from the app, will also mean searchers will be able to get what they need without navigating to Google for many use cases.

It’s likely that search traffic will decline from Google from specific user segments, especially business or technology related search journeys, as these users have shown themselves to be early adopters of AI search. 

Marketers can measure how much traffic they are generating from ChatGPT Search. As it’s possible to use platforms like Google Analytics and “apply filters for 'Session Default Channel Group' set to 'Referral' and 'Session Source' containing 'OpenAI.’” (Idea Grove)

I would recommend setting up a new monitoring work stream to measure how this changes over time, as stakeholders will have questions and you’ll need to show you understand how this is changing searcher behaviour.

You could also use new and emerging AI search analytics tools, such as HubSpot’s AI Search Grader and Profound to understand how often your brand is appearing in ChatGPT and the sentiment of those mentions.

In addition to quantitative measurements, I’d suggest defining a list of your most important search journey topics or specific keywords and searching those on a ChatGPT Plus account. Provide your business with regular updates on where and how your website is appearing. 

The AI search era continues to accelerate, and the integration of SearchGPT into ChatGPT is another major milestone that has the potential to change how marketers reach customers forever.