SearchGPT is a protype product produced by OpenAI, the same company that created ChatGPT. The internet search tool uses artificial intelligence to answer search queries. But it does so differently than what Google does with its powerful search engine. In this blog, we’ll explore SearchGPT and discuss how it has the potential to become a significant player in the next era of internet search.

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How We Search

For 20 over years, searchers have been trained in a process to find what they want on the internet. First Yahoo and soon after Google gave us a list of websites that the search engine thought was the most relevant to what was entered into the search bar.

These results, however, are really just links. Those looking for the information had to choose a site, click the link and then manually search the site for the content or information they needed. In some cases, this could be a time consuming and frustrating process.

A New Way to Search

According to SearchEngineLand.com, “SearchGPT, is an AI-powered search engine that combines the strengths of traditional search engines with the advanced conversational abilities of large language models.” To state it a little more simply, SearchGPT answers questions in a conversational way, providing answers from across the internet.

Not Like Google

Those answers are different than what we see when using Google. SearchGPT gives us actual answers to the questions asked of it, not simply a list of website links. SearchEngineLand.com explains that it provides, “…summaries and insights based on an understanding of context and the user’s intent.”

How SearchGPT Operates

OpenAI has not explained exactly how SearchGPT works. But it is assumed that it operates in a similar manner to its competition, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Both of these tools use a retrieval augmented generation (RAG) approach to generate results.

RAG searches a database and retrieves the most relevant information to the query. Because of a partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft, it is likely that SearchGPT uses the Bing database. These sources are then used by the language model to develop answers for the user.

How SearchGPT is Different

The results from SearchGPT will not look like the search engine results pages (SERPS) we see on Google. You won’t see a list of links. Instead, users will be able to experience a more dialogue-like interaction that delivers direct answers to your questions. In addition, you will also see a list of the sources used to develop the answer. Finally, users can aske deeper questions and see more detailed responses.

Final Thoughts

When thinking about traditional search engine optimization, the goal has been to get traffic to our websites. To do this we make sure our websites are search optimized, have good content that is updated regularly, and work to get backlinks. We do these things in an attempt to get Google to list our website link on the 1st page of the SERPs. In this model, website clicks are a metric that marketers care about.

In this new era of AI search and generative engine optimization (GEO), though, the goal is more about providing searchers with answers to their questions. They may click your website if it is listed as a source that was used for the content, but that is not the goal.

OpenAI’s head of media partnerships Varun Shetty recently noted that people using search tools are looking for answers. They don’t want to see a list of website links. This idea is at the very heart of why searchers use a search engine, to find the information they want to see.

While this concept is good for users, it may not be the best news for businesses that rely on website traffic from traditional SEO. Internet marketers will need to pivot. They will need to create richer content on their sites with the goal of becoming one of the sources of a SearchGPT answer.

Related Resources

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