# ChatGPT Search

> ChatGPT Search is ChatGPT's ability to retrieve live web results and answer with citations, instead of relying on training data alone. Pages are gathered by OAI-SearchBot, and appearing in its answers is a separate goal from using ChatGPT to write content.

- Updated: 2026-06-11
- Canonical: https://geotoolbox.ai/glossary/chatgpt-search

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When ChatGPT searches, it fires queries against a web index (Bing's index plus OpenAI's own crawl), retrieves candidate pages, and writes an answer that links the sources it used. ChatGPT had already passed 1 billion web searches in a single week by April 2025, per OpenAI's own announcement. To be eligible, your pages must be reachable by **OAI-SearchBot**, the crawler that feeds search, not GPTBot, which gathers training data.

Most "ChatGPT SEO" advice quietly mixes two jobs: getting cited when ChatGPT answers a question, versus using ChatGPT to draft content. Only the first is what this surface optimizes for.