Search GPT Has Landed: What OpenAI’s New Tool Means for SEO Professionals

So, Search GPT has finally landed from OpenAI, and I thought it was about time we had a proper look at it. It’s a fascinating new tool that’s stirring up quite a bit of interest, and I wanted to look into what it is, how it works, and what it might mean for us in the SEO community.

First off, what exactly is Search GPT? Well, it’s a new AI-powered search tool developed by OpenAI—the same company who brought us ChatGPT. They’ve designed it to help users retrieve information and answer questions in a more nuanced, conversational way. Unlike traditional search engines like Google, which typically throw a list of links at you (even with their AI overviews at the top), Search GPT generates a direct, on-the-fly response to your questions. It pulls together the most relevant information it can find and presents it to you in a conversational manner.

Now, how does it manage to do this? It’s powered by the same underlying technology as ChatGPT, but they’ve fine-tuned it to function more like a search engine. So, it prioritises accuracy, timeliness, and relevancy in its responses. Think of it as a hybrid between a traditional search engine and a knowledgeable assistant.

If you’ve not given it a go yet, you’ll find that when you open up ChatGPT and start a new chat, there’s a little globe icon or something similar you can click on. This tells it you’re initiating a search session, and it knows to search the web as well as use its own knowledge. It only works with GPT-4o, not the newer models, which is a bit of a limitation at the moment.

At its core, Search GPT uses a mix of OpenAI’s proprietary models and integrations with other sources to pull in data. This means it has access to up-to-date information through live browsing capabilities. Unlike previous models, which were limited by a cutoff in their training data, Search GPT can actively pull data from the web in real time and feed that into the answers it gives you.

I tested it out by asking about the current Bitcoin price, and it promptly fetched the latest figures for me. I also asked about the price fluctuations over the past five days, and it provided a neat summary of the ups and downs. So, it’s definitely capable of fetching recent and relevant information.

So, where does it get its data from? It’s pulling from general sources like news sites, databases, forums, and other public web pages. They’ve partnered with various trusted data providers to ensure they pull in reliable content. A significant aspect here is that it’s using Bing’s live index. Now, Bing might not be everyone’s favorite search engine, and it’s often overlooked by SEOs, especially in regions where it’s not widely used. But Bing’s index is actually quite substantial and comparable in size to Google’s.

Given the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI—Microsoft being a significant investor in OpenAI—it makes sense that they’re utilising Bing’s capabilities. So, when Search GPT decides where to look for answers, Bing plays a big part in that.

An important thing to note is that the results aren’t pulled verbatim. Search GPT uses its language model to understand the information it’s fetched and then summarises it. This means you’re getting a unique, synthesised response based on multiple sources, rather than a direct quote from a single page. Their aim is to reduce the risk of a single source being biased and influencing the answer too much.

Now, as SEOs, the big question is: how does Search GPT decide on rankings and relevancy? Rather than relying on traditional SEO signals like keywords and backlinks, Search GPT evaluates data based on factors like credibility, freshness, and contextual relevancy. It’s trying to assess how trustworthy a source is and how current the information is. For instance, a recent scientific study would generally be prioritised over a blog post from a few years back.

They’re also looking for consensus across sources. If multiple credible sources are saying the same thing, that information is more likely to be included in the response. So, in a way, it’s a bit like if you went to Google, read the top five or six pages on a topic, and then summarised the collective information in your own words. Search GPT is doing that heavy lifting for you in seconds.

So, what does this mean for us in the SEO world? Well, this is, in my opinion, the first time we’ve seen a new approach to search that actually looks like it could work differently from Google. Google’s been the dominant player in search because it’s the pinnacle of that type of search engine—the traditional search engine. Search GPT is doing something different. It’s adding this whole summarisation ability, and while Google is trying to keep up with their AI overviews, it’s not quite the same.

With Search GPT, you can have a conversation. You can start your initial research, read its initial summarisation, and then ask further questions. You can delve deeper into the topic, which you can’t really do with traditional Google search.

Thinking about how it affects SEO, we need to focus on being among the credible sources that Search GPT considers when pulling together its answers. In the first instance, doing well in Bing is going to help since Bing’s index is a key source for Search GPT. Freshness is obviously important too—they’re looking for up-to-date information.

But we have to remember that traditional SEO signals aren’t completely out the window. Since Bing is involved, things like keywords and backlinks are still influencing the results to some extent. So there’s still value in traditional SEO practices.

Now, how’s this going to affect the consumer search space as a whole? Well, as I mentioned in a recent podcast, the user base for ChatGPT and, by extension, Search GPT is orders of magnitude smaller than Google’s. Most people are still going to be using Google for the foreseeable future. Search GPT is currently a paid product—you need a ChatGPT Plus subscription to use it. While there are millions of paying users, it’s still a drop in the ocean compared to the billions of internet users worldwide.

This means that, at least in the short to medium term, it’s not going to suddenly upend your SEO efforts if you’re focused on Google. Since its launch, I haven’t seen any impact on my sites, and I don’t think many others will have either. It’s still quite niche.

That said, it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. For those of us who are more into tech and online developments, it’s a great tool to use. It has its limitations—it’s not great with local search, for instance, and it lacks some of the functionalities we’re used to with Google, like maps and directions.

But overall, I think it’s an exciting development. It’s not yet the Google killer for the mass market, but it might be for the specialist market. Google can cope with that for now, as it makes most of its money from advertising to the masses on a free service.

So, in terms of our SEO strategies, our focus should still be on Google, but we should also start paying more attention to Bing and how we can appear in Search GPT’s results. Use it, test it, see how your sites are appearing in its responses. Be aware of its limitations, but also of the opportunities it might present.

I hope you found this useful. If you’ve got any questions or thoughts, do get in touch. It’s a fascinating time to be involved in SEO, and I’m keen to see how things evolve with Search GPT and beyond.