How ChatGPT searches the web before it answers
When you ask ChatGPT a buying question, it does not answer straight away. It turns your question into about four short searches, reads what comes back, and then writes the answer. Which pages those searches find decides which brands get named.
What did the study look at?
In October 2026, researchers published a study on arXiv called “What Drives AI Citations?”. They collected 158,099 answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to buying questions over 90 days, with 468,037 links to sources. Then they replayed the questions to see exactly what the AI searched for.
What does ChatGPT do with your question?
It breaks your question into about four short, keyword-style searches. The study found that:
- Each search keeps less than half of your words (43%)
- About 1 in 4 searches adds the current year, like “2026”
- About 1 in 4 searches adds a brand name you never typed
- It often searches again for the businesses it found in the first round
Does Gemini do the same?
Not quite. Gemini writes about three searches, and they read like full questions, closer to what you typed. It rarely adds a year or a brand name. This is one reason ChatGPT and Gemini can give you different lists for the same question.
Why does this matter for my brand?
Every page ChatGPT linked to was one its own search had found. And which pages those searches found explained far more about who got named (32%) than anything on the pages themselves, like FAQ boxes or page speed (2.8%).
In plain words: you first have to be found by the AI’s searches. Pages whose titles and paragraphs match the questions people ask got found more often.
Does AI also answer from memory?
Yes. The study found that ChatGPT writes brands it already knows into its searches, and prefers websites it already knows. When two products had exactly the same facts, changing only the brand name changed the ranking.
Big brands live in AI’s memory. Small brands do not, so for them the search step is everything. Without pages to find, small brands got no steady ranking at all. With good pages, their ranking became steady again.
What should I do with this?
Be easy to find in the searches AI writes, and make your name one AI remembers.
- Write page titles and first lines that match the real questions buyers ask
- Keep key pages fresh and dated, since AI often adds the year to its searches
- Get your name onto the lists and articles AI finds for your category
- Use the same name and facts everywhere, so AI links them all to you