ChatGPT can now search the web when answering your prompts, making it easier to get up-to-date answers to all your questions and queries.
But is ChatGPT’s web search any good and, most importantly, how does it do against Google, not only from the point of view of a regular user, but also for a website owner like myself and, probably, yourself?
ChatGPT’s Web Search finds good websites for sources
The examples I will use below might seem a bit biased because they all involve properties I own, but in reality they are not, as it this can happen with many other questions/topics.
As you probably know from my series of website income reports (you can check out my October 2024 income report here), I have a health website that I’ve been running for more than 10 years now, based on a condition I have been diagnosed with and managed well over time.
So, even though I am not a doctor, I have direct experience with this condition, I understand it better than most people writing online about it and I have actually helped various people cure it. I can’t go more in-depth, but the website offers up-to-date advice, based on both personal experience and research (I always back up the claims with studies and such) and is well written, in my opinion. Many people, over the years, reached out to thank me for the articles, and for the help offered. So it’s a good website.
Does Google care? Of course not. My health website is shadowbanned by Google (although articles appear as indexed in the Search Console and no manual actions are reported), it doesn’t show in the search results.
If I search for “very specific long-tail keyword + site’s name” it will not show. It’s that bad in Google’s eyes.
So, when Chat GPT’s option to search the internet popped up, I asked it this question: “Can you eat X food if you suffer from X condition?” (It was one of the articles I wrote on my website, not showing anywhere on Google).
Chat GPT gave me a complete answer on the matter, and guess who was the #1 source, above Healthline? My niche website!
A major win… right?
Well… even though I was initially happy to see that the real value of my work was finally acknowledged by anybody, I wouldn’t rush to consider this a win.
Sure, it’s much better than not being shown at all, as it happens with Google.
But… ChatGPT managed to give me a complete answer to the questions I asked. As a regular user, I would have little desire to click on the source link and visit the website it got its answer from. Yes, my article goes even more in-depth than ChatGPT’s answer, but for most people asking this question, it would still be enough.
So… will ChatGPT’s web search results help website owners?
I don’t think so.
I don’t think we’ll get much traffic from it… but we will have a clearer picture in just a few months. Still, any extra traffic, at this point, is better than the no traffic we get from Google.
The biggest problem with Google Search vs ChatGPT search?
Back to the question I asked in my example above, the BIGGEST problem Google had was that they didn’t answer it at all. None of their results even mentioned the food I asked about – and I scrolled all the way to the end of the search results, and my website actually answering the question never showed up.
This is a problem not just for website owners, but also for Google and the people using their search engine: because they won’t find their answer, they will move over to other sources. It’s as simple as that.
So Google deciding to change things so much – and now finding themselves in a mess in which they can’t even provide simple answers to simple queries – will hurt them in the long run, in my opinion.
Yes, small website owners like myself will suffer more and will most likely be forced out of business… but eventually Google will suffer.
Right now, surprisingly, ChatGPT’s search delivers better results on specific queries when compared to Google. They use Bing’s search engine – and Bing’s search has its fair share of queries that doesn’t answer well, but at least there you can do some digging and eventually get your answer, even for those underserved queries.
Whereas on Google, some queries (like the one in my example) will NOT generate an answer for the person searching.
For the user, is ChatGPT’s web search any good?
Absolutely.
For anybody who doesn’t own a website, ChatGPT’s web search is a godsend. Similar to Google’s AI overviews, ChatGPT can deliver the answer instantly, without the user needing to leave the website and dig for a short answer in a 6,000 word article.
The major change that ChatGPT brings with the web search option is the freshness of the data. Many questions don’t need fresh data, so for those, the web search option doesn’t matter much. But those answers that need to be up to date, will now be.
And this probably hurts Google even more, as the freshness of data was one of the major advantages Alphabet’s search engine still had.
Of course, ChatGPT continues to deliver incomplete, maybe sometimes unsatisfactory answers. Even in the example query I used above, the answer was not complete. It probably was enough for somebody who knew nothing to begin with, but my article offered even more information, options and, in the end, better educated the user.
But probably, this is something that ChatGPT will get better and better with over time.
Is ChatGPT’s web search a beacon of hope for website owners?
No, I don’t think so. Even if it becomes the #1 search engine in the world, I don’t think it will ever send as much traffic to websites as Google Search did a year ago (and longer).
Even if your website is the #1 source for an answer, the user not only has to click twice to read your article, but they also have to be very curious and invested in finding out more, because ChatGPT will most likely offer at least a decent answer. On most occasions, it will probably be complete – or just enough for most users.
So, for small, independent website owners, the situation won’t improve with the launch of ChatGPT’s web search. And I don’t see it improving in the future either.
It would only improve if Google managed to fix its algorithms and started rewarding what they claim they’re looking for: quality content. Right now, Google is still flooded with AI-written garbage, articles that are outdated, incomplete or completely useless.
Sure, they got rid of many websites that produced this garbage, but in the process, they also removed so many that didn’t. I can imagine it’s difficult for them to sort things out… but I feel they have to do it sooner rather than later.
After all, no matter what AI technology is used to answer a user’s questions, it still needs a source to get its answer from. And, so far, all companies are trying to destroy these sources.
Conclusion: Is ChatGPT Search better than Google?
In some cases, ChatGPT seems to be able to draw its answers from better sources that Google offers for the same query.
Is it truly better, though? It depends.
It depends on what you want and like to see. I believe that the younger generation – those who already search for answers on Instagram, TikTok and other similar places – ChatGPT is better, because it involves less reading, fewer clicks and it’s easier to navigate.
For older people who grew up searching on Google, and especially for those who want to get all angles on a specific question/query, Google remains the better option – at least in theory. I say “at least in theory” because Google still fails to actually find and deliver the websites answering said queries.
But, even though I found an example where they don’t have the exact answer to the exact query, they do for most. And usually, you will find on the first page an article to answer your question more in-depth than ChatGPT.
In the long term, though, I believe that Google’s search supremacy will be put under a lot of pressure to say the least. Google search will have to change and improve in order to beat the competitors – and after so many years, it has some really good competitors.
What do you think, though? Both as a user and as a website owner – do you think ChatGPT’s web search is a better option than Google at the moment or not?