Sean Walsh
Sean is a Director at Intelligency heading up our digital marketing and client services operations. Sean has 15+ years experiencing working both in-house and agency with brands including Lloyds, Alstom, Hitachi, Lufthansa, Viaplay, DFDS Seaways and Mercedes-Benz.
OpenAI has announced upgrades to how ChatGPT handles search, with improvements designed to make results more reliable, helpful, and easier to read.
What’s new
The updates focus on three key areas:
- Accuracy: ChatGPT now makes fewer mistakes when generating answers. In AI, these mistakes are sometimes called hallucinations. This is when the system gives a response that sounds convincing but is not factually correct.
- Shopping intent: The system is better at recognising when someone is looking to buy something or get product recommendations. This means the results you see should be more relevant if you are browsing with shopping in mind.
- Presentation: Answers are now formatted in a cleaner, easier-to-skim way while still including useful detail.
Why this matters
These changes show that OpenAI is positioning ChatGPT search as a real alternative to traditional search engines like Google. While AI-driven search is becoming more popular, it is important to note that it currently accounts for less than 1% of website referral traffic. For marketers, it is still a small but growing channel to watch.
The growth of ChatGPT
ChatGPT is now one of the fastest-growing consumer apps in history, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide. More people are using AI for everyday search, research, and even shopping decisions. This growing adoption means digital marketers cannot ignore AI platforms. Your audience may already be using ChatGPT to answer questions that once would have gone straight to Google.
Why ChatGPT matters for SEO
For SEO professionals, ChatGPT’s evolution is highly relevant. Traditional SEO focuses on ranking in Google’s search results, but AI tools like ChatGPT often summarise information instead of listing websites. That means there are fewer clicks to external sites.
However, if your brand is mentioned in those summaries, it can influence visibility, authority, and even customer trust. Marketers will need to think not just about optimising for Google, but also about how their content might appear (or not appear) in AI-driven answers.
