# ChatGPT — the record

The most-used standalone answer engine — its citation behavior, shopping surfaces, and ads products are a beat of their own.

ChatGPT is the most-measured standalone engine on the record, and the measurements keep saying the territory is open. Semrush's study of 50,000 brands found most topics have no clearly dominant brand; Kevin Indig's analysis of six months of that citation data found only 15.2% of 1,094 categories have a single clear leader, that 89.3% of estimated demand sits in categories with no clear owner, and that the most-cited domain matched the most-mentioned brand just 20.8% of the time. Similarweb reports 95% of ChatGPT's 494 million users also used Google in the same window, and that only 6.8% of U.S. desktop queries carried a citation at all. Writesonic measured ChatGPT omitting the source brand 37% of the time.

Also known as: https://chatgpt.com/ · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT · https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q115564437

- 2026-09-04: ChatGPT's in-house search index still leans on Google, Bing (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-04-chatgpt-s-in-house-search-index-still-leans-on-google-bing/)
  Peec AI's Tomek Rudzki reports that OpenAI has built its own retrieval index, internally named Labrador, spanning separate vertical indexes for web pages…
- 2026-09-04: ChatGPT Ads Manager adds a plugin for ChatGPT and Codex (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-04-chatgpt-ads-manager-adds-a-plugin-for-chatgpt-and-codex/)
  OpenAI rolled out a bundle of ChatGPT Ads Manager updates, per Search Engine Roundtable: a plugin that lets advertisers create, edit and troubleshoot…
- 2026-09-03: NIQ and Similarweb launch AI shopping measurement tool (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-03-niq-and-similarweb-launch-ai-shopping-measurement-tool/)
  NIQ and Similarweb are building an Agentic Commerce Measurement product that tracks AI-driven product discovery across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode…
- 2026-09-03: Ten Speed: product pages draw 24% of AI citations, Reddit 4% (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-03-ten-speed-product-pages-draw-24-of-ai-citations-reddit-4/)
  Ten Speed analyzed 170 B2B buyer-evaluation prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, generating 7,387 citation appearances tracked via the…
- 2026-09-03: ChatGPT shopping mode: feed retrieval overtakes web search (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-03-chatgpt-shopping-mode-feed-retrieval-overtakes-web-search/)
  Feed-integrated retrieval accounted for roughly 65% of ChatGPT Shopping mode product recommendations as of late August, overtaking web search as the…
- 2026-09-03: Comscore: sponsored ChatGPT ads hit 24% of hotel prompts (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-03-comscore-sponsored-chatgpt-ads-hit-24-of-hotel-prompts/)
  Comscore has begun tracking sponsored links inside ChatGPT responses using opt-in user-panel data rather than synthetic test prompts, per PPC Land.
- 2026-09-03: Financial services surges into ChatGPT's top ad spenders (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-03-financial-services-surges-into-chatgpt-s-top-ad-spenders/)
  Sensor Tower found ad density on ChatGPT rose 163% between April and August 2026, averaging 26% monthly growth, with about 1,200 unique advertisers active…
- 2026-09-01: SISTRIX: ChatGPT replaces 74% of its cited sources every week (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-01-sistrix-chatgpt-replaces-74-of-its-cited-sources-every-week/)
  The largest public measurement of citation drift re-sampled 82,619 prompts weekly for 17 weeks, from December 17, 2025 to April 8, 2026, producing…
- 2026-09-01: New buyer-persona corpus measures demand for AI citations (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-01-new-buyer-persona-corpus-measures-demand-for-ai-citations/)
  A new arXiv preprint describes PersonaGen-1M, a corpus of 1,031,732 synthetic buyer personas spanning 511 industry labels and 4 market contexts, built to…
- 2026-08-31: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews split on health authority sources (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-31-chatgpt-google-ai-overviews-split-on-health-authority-sources/)
  ChatGPT's top five cited domains for health questions are all government agencies or hospital systems, with YouTube absent from its top ten, while Google…
- 2026-08-31: ChatGPT Ads reaches $1 billion annualized revenue run rate (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-31-chatgpt-ads-reaches-1-billion-annualized-revenue-run-rate/)
  ChatGPT Ads reached $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate in under 200 days after launch, per OpenAI.
- 2026-08-31: EU designates ChatGPT a very large online search engine (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-31-eu-designates-chatgpt-a-very-large-online-search-engine/)
  The European Commission said Monday it designated ChatGPT a Very Large Online Search Engine (VLOSE) under the EU's Digital Services Act, alongside Reddit…
- 2026-08-30: Query fan-out decides AI citation before a page is ever read (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-30-query-fan-out-decides-ai-citation-before-a-page-is-ever-read/)
  Two measurements published nine days apart describe the same mechanism, and neither one names the other.
- 2026-08-27: AI answers on brand questions are 96% accurate, but platforms skip 31% of prompts (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-27-ai-answers-on-brand-questions-are-96-accurate-but-platforms-skip-31/)
  Seer Interactive tracked 1,562 branded prompts about its own company across six AI platforms — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews…
- 2026-08-27: BrightEdge: Reddit citations skew to brand-aware AI shoppers (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-27-brightedge-reddit-citations-skew-to-brand-aware-ai-shoppers/)
  BrightEdge's latest weekly AI-search analysis, covering May 17-August 2, 2026 across Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT in nine industries, finds that…
- 2026-08-27: Reddit's citation drop is ChatGPT-only: 86% there, 11% on AI Overviews (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-27-reddit-s-citation-drop-is-chatgpt-only-86-there-11-on-ai-overviews/)
  Promptwatch put per-engine numbers to Reddit's citation decline on August 20: its share of ChatGPT Search citations fell from an average 3.83% (July…
- 2026-08-26: BrightEdge launches Agent Edge to make sites AI-agent ready (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-26-brightedge-launches-agent-edge-to-make-sites-ai-agent-ready/)
  BrightEdge launched Agent Edge, a platform that detects AI-agent requests at the CDN layer and serves a lightweight, Markdown-formatted version of a…
- 2026-08-24: Retail takes 39% of ChatGPT ad slots on 24% of queries (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-24-retail-takes-39-of-chatgpt-ad-slots-on-24-of-queries/)
  Adthena analyzed nearly 850,000 US and UK AI search queries from March to May 2026 and found retail and fashion queries drew 39% of observed US ad…
- 2026-08-24: Survey: 81% of marketers still call AI search 'SEO' (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-24-survey-81-of-marketers-still-call-ai-search-seo/)
  A Fractl survey of 343 U.S. marketing decision-makers found 81% still refer to their AI search strategy internally as "SEO," with only 27% having formally…
- 2026-08-23: AI assistants miss 85.6% of Bali restaurants in market census (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-23-ai-assistants-miss-85-6-of-bali-restaurants-in-market-census/)
  A Norly Research audit of 4,776 food-service venues across two Bali submarkets found ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity failed to recommend at least…
- 2026-08-21: ChatGPT Ads adds platform targeting, but reporting still lags (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-21-chatgpt-ads-adds-platform-targeting-but-reporting-still-lags/)
  OpenAI added a campaign-level control letting advertisers include or exclude iOS App, Android App or Web from ad delivery, a lever absent since ChatGPT…
- 2026-08-21: ChatGPT Ads now defaults new ad groups to 'Maximize results' (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-21-chatgpt-ads-makes-automated-bidding-the-default-for-new-ad-groups/)
  OpenAI now preselects "Maximize results," an automated bidding strategy, for new ad groups in ChatGPT Ads Manager Beta, per PPC Land.
- 2026-08-20: Pew finds a third of post-ChatGPT webpages show AI authorship (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-20-pew-finds-a-third-of-post-chatgpt-webpages-show-ai-authorship/)
  Pew Research analyzed almost 500,000 English-language pages from the Common Crawl archive using the Open Pangram detection tool, finding 10% of a July…
- 2026-08-20: Google and ChatGPT cite different slices of the same YouTube video (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-20-google-and-chatgpt-cite-different-slices-of-the-same-youtube-video/)
  Google AI Overviews links to a timestamped moment in 50% of its YouTube citations and to Shorts in 17.5%, versus 0.6% and 1.1% for ChatGPT, according to a…
- 2026-08-19: ChatGPT Ads Manager adds view-through conversion tracking (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-19-chatgpt-ads-manager-adds-view-through-conversion-tracking/)
  OpenAI's ChatGPT Ads Manager now surfaces view-through conversions as a standalone column with a fixed one-day attribution window, measured from ad…
- 2026-08-19: Business sites dominate Gemini's local AI citations (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-19-business-sites-dominate-gemini-s-local-ai-citations/)
  A Steady Demand analysis of 14,472 AI citations across 1,487 local search queries in the 50 largest U.S. metros found business websites accounted for…
- 2026-08-19: Claude answers are less accurate than ChatGPT's, study finds (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-19-claude-answers-are-less-accurate-than-chatgpt-s-study-finds/)
  Profound analyzed more than 158,000 AI-generated brand claims through its FactCheck tool and found inaccuracy rates of 4.3-6.8% across engines, with…
- 2026-08-19: Reddit's ChatGPT Search citations fell 86% in four days, tracker finds (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-19-reddit-s-chatgpt-search-citations-fell-86-in-four-days-tracker-finds/)
  Promptwatch found Reddit's share of ChatGPT Search citations fell from an average of 3.83% (Jul.
- 2026-08-19: ChatGPT ads go live in 31 more European markets (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-19-chatgpt-ads-go-live-in-31-more-european-markets/)
  OpenAI expanded ChatGPT Ads into 31 additional European markets on Aug. 19, including Germany, France, Spain and Italy, bringing the pilot to roughly 40…
- 2026-08-18: ChatGPT's own search queries name brands users never typed (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-18-chatgpt-s-own-search-queries-name-brands-users-never-typed/)
  An independent analysis of raw traffic from a ChatGPT Plus account found the model injects brand names into its own search queries that the user never…
- 2026-08-18: ChatGPT commercial conversations nearly double in a year (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-18-chatgpt-commercial-conversations-nearly-double-in-a-year/)
  Commercial intent in ChatGPT conversations rose from 13.9% to 19.2% between June 2025 and June 2026, per Profound's analysis of 7.5 million…
- 2026-08-17: ChatGPT ads go live in Mexico and Brazil, hit 9 markets (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-17-chatgpt-ads-go-live-in-mexico-and-brazil-hit-9-markets/)
  OpenAI added Mexico and Brazil to ChatGPT Ads on August 17, its first Spanish- and Portuguese-language markets, bringing the total to nine countries, per…
- 2026-08-16: ChatGPT ads expand to Europe as crawler bypasses blocks (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-16-chatgpt-ads-expand-to-europe-as-crawler-bypasses-blocks/)
  OpenAI is bringing ChatGPT ads to the European Economic Area and Switzerland later this month, limited to Free and Go plans with personalized targeting…
- 2026-08-16: OpenAI tests descriptive headings above ChatGPT ads (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-16-openai-tests-descriptive-headings-above-chatgpt-ads/)
  OpenAI is testing a descriptive heading displayed above ads that appear within ChatGPT responses, per Search Engine Roundtable, which spotted the test but…
- 2026-08-16: Similarweb launches ad-tracking for ChatGPT and AI Mode (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-16-similarweb-launches-ad-tracking-for-chatgpt-and-ai-mode/)
  Similarweb added AI Ads to its Ad Intelligence product on August 13, giving marketers visibility into actual ad creatives and landing pages running inside…
- 2026-08-16: Study finds ChatGPT and AI Overviews cite different parts of social platforms (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-16-study-finds-chatgpt-and-ai-overviews-cite-different-parts-of-social/)
  Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT cite different assets within the same social platforms, not just different domains, according to a BrightEdge analysis of…
- 2026-08-11: Study: AI assistants favor brands with better-sounding names (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-11-study-ai-assistants-favor-brands-with-better-sounding-names/)
  AI assistants including ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot described real brands more positively when their names scored…
- 2026-08-11: ChatGPT ads appear on a quarter of commercial prompts (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-11-chatgpt-ads-appear-on-a-quarter-of-commercial-prompts/)
  A study by SE Ranking of more than 50,000 commercial prompts across 20 niches found ads appeared on 25.94% of them, with 14.35% of those ads unrelated to…
- 2026-08-10: UGC platforms outcite review sites in ChatGPT answers (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-10-ugc-platforms-outcite-review-sites-in-chatgpt-answers/)
  UGC platforms accounted for 17.1% of domains cited in ChatGPT answers to SaaS buying queries — more than four times publishers' 4.0% — and outcited review…
- 2026-08-10: AI Overviews, ChatGPT beat social platforms on shopper trust (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-10-ai-overviews-chatgpt-beat-social-platforms-on-shopper-trust/)
  AI tools now lengthen the purchase decision for 42% of US shoppers who say they research more before buying, per an RTB House survey of 1,840 US and…
- 2026-08-07: Gen Z consideration for Claude and OpenAI nearly doubles, YouGov finds (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-07-gen-z-consideration-for-claude-and-openai-nearly-doubles-yougov-finds/)
  Gen Z consideration of Claude climbed from 14.2% to 28.1% and of OpenAI from 10.1% to 22.1% between Q1 and Q2 2026, per YouGov BrandIndex data reported by…
- 2026-08-07: ChatGPT Ads tests multi-product carousel, expands to Brazil and Mexico (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-07-chatgpt-ads-tests-multi-product-carousel-expands-to-brazil-and-mexico/)
  OpenAI is testing a multi-product carousel format for ChatGPT product feed ads and will launch ChatGPT Ads in Brazil and Mexico in the coming week, per…
- 2026-08-06: Study ties AI citation likelihood to how recently a page was updated (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-06-study-ties-ai-citation-likelihood-to-how-recently-a-page-was-updated/)
  Seer Interactive analyzed 47,097 citations across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for four brands over a four-month window and found 75% of cited pages had…
- 2026-08-05: Survey: 72% of holiday shoppers now consult AI chatbots for gift ideas (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-08-05-survey-72-of-holiday-shoppers-now-consult-ai-chatbots-for-gift-ideas/)
  Optimove's survey of 648 U.S. consumers found 72% regularly or occasionally use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for gift ideas and shopping…
- 2026-07-31: OpenAI tests ChatGPT ad format that opens an agent chat, not a website (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-07-31-openai-tests-chatgpt-ad-format-that-opens-an-agent-chat-not-a-website/)
  OpenAI is testing a new "Agent" campaign type in ChatGPT Ads Manager that sends users into a Business Agent conversation instead of to the advertiser's…
- 2026-07-30: Study finds AI models search more often for brands they already know (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-07-30-study-finds-ai-models-search-more-often-for-brands-they-already-know/)
  A geoSurge study found AI models search for familiar brands 3.2 times more often than unfamiliar ones — 55.7% versus 17.4% of the time — per Search Engine…
- 2026-07-30: Similarweb: 95% of ChatGPT users also search on Google (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-07-30-similarweb-95-of-chatgpt-users-also-search-on-google/)
  A new Similarweb report finds 95% of ChatGPT's 494 million users also used Google during the same March-to-May 2026 span, per Search Engine Journal…
- 2026-07-29: Analysis: most AI search demand still has no clear ChatGPT category leader (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-07-29-analysis-most-ai-search-demand-still-has-no-clear-chatgpt-category/)
  Kevin Indig analyzed six months of ChatGPT citation data from Semrush — 1,094 U.S. categories, five prompts each, over 50,000 brands and 600,000-plus…
- 2026-07-29: Writesonic study finds AI engines often skip naming source brands (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-07-29-writesonic-study-finds-ai-engines-often-skip-naming-source-brands/)
  Writesonic analyzed roughly 16 million brand appearances across seven AI answer engines over a 30-day window and found citations frequently reference…
- 2026-07-24: Conversion bidding comes to ChatGPT Ads, with rolling budgets and mobile measurement (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-07-24-chatgpt-ads-adds-conversion-bidding-geo-exclusions-and-bulk-campaign/)
  OpenAI rolled out a batch of ChatGPT Ads updates, including optimized cost-per-click campaigns that bid toward likely conversions, geographic exclusion…
- 2026-07-23: ChatGPT Ads Manager adds conversion-value tooltips (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-07-23-chatgpt-ads-manager-adds-conversion-value-tooltips/)
  OpenAI added tooltips to the conversions column in ChatGPT Ads Manager showing conversion values for view-through and click-through attribution, per…
- 2026-07-23: AI Mode and ChatGPT test bottom-anchored citations (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-07-23-ai-mode-and-chatgpt-test-bottom-anchored-citations/)
  Google AI Mode and OpenAI's ChatGPT are both testing citation cards placed at the bottom of answers — AI Mode anchoring a card at the end of the response…
- 2026-07-20: Semrush study: most ChatGPT topics have no dominant brand (https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-07-20-semrush-study-most-chatgpt-topics-have-no-dominant-brand/)
  A Semrush analysis of ChatGPT visibility across 50,000 brands finds most topics still have no clearly dominant brand, and argues AI visibility accrues at…

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