Short answer
ChatGPT search picks sources in four steps. It rewrites the user's question into one or more targeted searches, sends them to search providers and its own index, ranks the results "using multiple factors", then reads the most relevant pages and cites the ones it uses. To be eligible, your site must allow OAI-SearchBot. Ranking on Google helps but isn't required: most ChatGPT citations don't rank in Google's top 10.
Key takeaways
- OpenAI says ChatGPT rewrites queries, "sometimes partners with other search providers", ranks results using multiple factors, and doesn't guarantee placement.
- Eligibility is binary: your site must allow OAI-SearchBot, and your host or CDN must let OpenAI's IPs through.
- One prompt becomes 2–4 narrower searches ("fan-out"). Pages that answer those narrower questions get cited.
- Overlap with Google is limited: 27% of cited sources ranked on Google for the fan-out queries in a March 2026 test, and about 40% ranked on Google or Bing.
- About 78% of cited sources were SEO-style pages: listicles, product pages and pricing pages. Being on other sites' "best of" lists matters.
In this article
What happens when a buyer asks ChatGPT
Imagine a procurement manager asks: "Which contract manufacturers in the Midwest can do low-volume CNC machining for medical devices?" Here's what ChatGPT does, based on OpenAI's own description and what researchers have observed.
1. It decides whether to search
OpenAI says ChatGPT "may search the web automatically when your question would benefit from current information", and users can also force a search. Vendor-selection questions like this one usually trigger a search. Questions about general concepts often don't, and then the answer comes from what the model learned in training.
2. It rewrites the question into targeted searches
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT "typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries" before sending them to search providers. For local questions it may add a city inferred from the user's IP address, without sharing the IP itself. Researchers call this query fan-out. In Grow and Convert's March 2026 study of 100 buying-intent prompts, each prompt that triggered a search produced 2 to 4 fan-out queries.
Our example might become "medical device contract manufacturer CNC low volume Ohio", "ISO 13485 machining companies Midwest" and "best contract manufacturers medical devices 2026". Each search returns different pages.
3. It retrieves and ranks results
OpenAI says ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers", and its help page links Microsoft's privacy policy in that context. It also maintains its own index, built by OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says ChatGPT "ranks search results using multiple factors" and that "placement is not guaranteed". It doesn't publish the factors.
4. It reads pages and writes a cited answer
ChatGPT then reads the most promising pages and writes its answer, with citations linking to the sources it drew on. When it fetches a page live, it does so as ChatGPT-User, and like OpenAI's other crawlers it reads the HTML without running JavaScript. If your key facts load with JavaScript, they don't reach the answer.
What the studies show about ChatGPT citations
| Study | Finding |
|---|---|
| Ahrefs, 15,000 long-tail prompts (ChatGPT data from July 2025) | 8% of ChatGPT's in-text citations ranked in Google's top 10 for the original prompt. Perplexity's overlap was much higher, at 28.6%. |
| Grow and Convert, 100 buying-intent prompts (March 2026) | 27% of cited sources ranked on Google and 23% on Bing for ChatGPT's actual fan-out queries. About 40% ranked on either engine within 10 pages, and about 50% at the domain level. |
| Grow and Convert (same study) | About 78% of cited sources were SEO-style content: listicles, product pages and pricing pages. |
| Grow and Convert (same study) | About 10% of citations led to error pages. |
Two conclusions stand out. First, ranking for the user's original wording matters much less than being findable for the narrower searches ChatGPT actually runs. Second, ChatGPT favors pages built to answer buying questions: comparisons, "best X for Y" lists, product details and pricing. Those are often pages on other people's sites.
What a B2B company can influence
- Eligibility. Allow OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User in robots.txt, and make sure your CDN, host and security plugins let OpenAI's published IPs through. See our AI crawler guide and firewall checklist.
- Coverage of fan-out questions. Map the 10–20 questions a buyer asks on the way to a shortlist (capabilities, certifications, locations, lead times, pricing model, comparisons) and make sure a specific page on your site answers each one plainly.
- Extractable facts. Put direct claims near the top of the page: what you do, for whom, where, with which certifications, at what minimum order or price range. Vague marketing copy gives the model nothing to quote.
- Third-party presence. Since listicles and comparison pages make up a large share of citations, being included in industry directories, "top suppliers" roundups, association member lists and review sites puts you into the sources ChatGPT reads.
- Search engine visibility. About 40% of cited sources ranked on Google or Bing for the fan-out queries, so classic SEO still feeds ChatGPT. Make sure Bing indexes your key pages, not just Google.
- Freshness and consistency. Keep prices, locations and capabilities current, and consistent across your site, llms.txt, schema and profiles elsewhere. Contradictions make a model hedge or pick a competitor.
What you can't control
- The ranking itself. OpenAI doesn't publish its factors, and anyone promising guaranteed ChatGPT placement is overselling.
- Variation between runs. The same prompt can produce different fan-out queries and different sources on different days, for different users and locations.
- Answers without search. When ChatGPT answers from training data, there are no live citations. Your influence there comes from how widely and consistently your company is described across the web over time.
How to measure whether ChatGPT cites you
- Build a prompt set. Write 20–30 prompts your buyers would really use, mixing broad category questions ("best 3PL for…") with specific ones ("…with cold storage in Texas").
- Run them monthly with search on, from a clean session, and record which companies are named and which URLs are cited.
- Check the logs. ChatGPT-User visits show pages ChatGPT opened during conversations. Verify them against OpenAI's IP list (here's how).
- Track referrals. Set up an AI channel in GA4 to see chatgpt.com visits and the leads they bring (guide). AI-referred visitors often convert well. Ahrefs measured 23 times the conversion rate of its traditional organic visitors.
Our free Agent Blindness Report does this across six assistants and shows which competitors get named instead of you. See the sample report.
Frequently asked questions
How does ChatGPT decide which websites to cite?
When ChatGPT searches, it rewrites the user's question into one or more targeted queries, sends them to search providers, ranks the results "using multiple factors", reads the most relevant pages and cites the ones it uses. OpenAI doesn't publish its ranking factors and says placement is not guaranteed.
Does ChatGPT use Google or Bing?
OpenAI says ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers" and links Microsoft's privacy policy among them. It also runs its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot, and requires sites to allow it to be eligible. In Grow and Convert's March 2026 test, 27% of cited sources ranked on Google and 23% on Bing for ChatGPT's fan-out queries.
Do I need to rank on Google to be cited by ChatGPT?
No. Studies find limited overlap. Ahrefs found that 8% of ChatGPT's in-text citations ranked in Google's top 10 for the original prompt (July 2025 data), and Grow and Convert found about 60% of cited sources didn't rank in the first 10 pages of Google or Bing for the fan-out queries. Strong SEO still helps, because many cited pages do rank.
What is query fan-out?
ChatGPT breaks a question into several narrower searches. A prompt like "best 3PL for a mid-size e-commerce brand" might become separate searches for 3PL comparisons, pricing and specific providers. Grow and Convert observed 2 to 4 fan-out queries per prompt that triggered a search.
What kind of pages does ChatGPT cite?
Mostly pages built to answer buying questions. In Grow and Convert's study, about 78% of cited sources were SEO-style content such as listicles, product pages and pricing pages.
How can I check whether ChatGPT cites my company?
Run a fixed set of buyer prompts in ChatGPT every month, with web search on, and record which sources and companies appear. Watch your server logs for ChatGPT-User visits, which happen when ChatGPT opens a page during a conversation, and track chatgpt.com referrals in GA4.
Free tool
Step one: can ChatGPT reach your site?
ChatGPT can only cite pages OAI-SearchBot is allowed to crawl. The free LLM Readiness Check tests that, plus 14 other AI crawlers, in 10 seconds.
Founder of AGI Search Labs. More than a decade in search, analytics and performance marketing (GA4, server-side tagging, Google Ads). Google Partners Digital Champion 2023. LinkedIn
Sources
- OpenAI Help: ChatGPT search
- OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
- Grow and Convert: Only 40% of ChatGPT sources come from Google and Bing for known fan-out queries (March 30, 2026)
- Ahrefs: Only 12% of AI cited URLs rank in Google's top 10 for the original prompt (August 2025)
- Vercel and MERJ: The rise of the AI crawler (December 2024)
- Ahrefs: AI search traffic converts better (first-party data)