Recent findings have sparked a significant debate in the SEO community: Is OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search relying on Google’s index to power its results? While OpenAI has its own web crawler (OAI-SearchBot), new evidence suggests a much tighter integration—or at least a dependency—on Google’s search results.
As reported by Barry Schwartz, several tests indicate that ChatGPT is able to discover and surface content that has only been indexed through Google.
The “Ghost Page” Experiment
The most compelling evidence comes from an experiment conducted by researcher Abhishek Iyer. To test whether ChatGPT was “piggybacking” on Google, he followed a specific methodology designed to isolate discovery sources:
- Creation of Unique Content: He created a brand-new webpage containing a completely made-up term that had never existed on the internet.
- Controlled Indexing: Instead of letting crawlers find the page naturally, he manually submitted the URL via Google Search Console (GSC). This ensured that, theoretically, only Google was aware of the page’s existence.
- The Result: Almost immediately after Google indexed the page, ChatGPT became aware of it. Since the URL was never submitted to OpenAI and hadn’t been linked to from other sites, the speed and accuracy of the discovery suggest that ChatGPT is monitoring Google’s index in real-time.
Why This Matters
If OpenAI is indeed using Google Search results as a primary or supplementary data source, it shifts the landscape for digital marketers and search engine optimizers in several ways:
- Google Search Console’s Growing Importance: GSC may now be the “one-stop shop” for getting content seen by both traditional search engines and leading AI models.
- Indexing Speed: The “almost immediate” discovery suggests that OpenAI isn’t just crawling the web independently; it may be using APIs or scrapers to see what Google is surfacing.
- The “Search Engine” Identity: This blurs the line between ChatGPT as an independent search engine and ChatGPT as a high-level “wrapper” or aggregator of existing search data.
Key Takeaway: For creators, the strategy remains largely the same: if you win on Google, you likely win on ChatGPT. However, it raises questions about the independence of AI search and the competitive moats between tech giants.
