By Pere Munar, on 19 September 2024
SearchGPT is a search tool developed with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that quickly responds to users' questions and provides the sources of the information, making it easier and faster to find what you're looking for. It also offers an interactive way of searching for information, as it can continue the conversation.
While traditional search engines return a long list of different sources for users to click on to find the information they’re seeking, this AI tool provides a clear and concise answer to the query, along with a few relevant sources in case the user wants to dive deeper. While some search engines do this occasionally, with SearchGPT, it's how it operates for any question asked. In other words, SearchGPT aims to be a direct competitor to search engines like Google (which has already integrated AI into its results) or AI-powered tools like Perplexity.
In this article, we’ll dive into how this tool works so you can fully understand it. We’ll also showcase some practical use cases so you can see how to apply this AI in your business’s digital marketing efforts.
Key Features of SearchGPT
- SearchGPT has web access, allowing it to detect up-to-date, real-time information from the internet and provide users with sources and links to that information.
- This tool not only offers a list of links to the sources but also extracts data from those sources, organizes it, makes sense of it, and provides a clear, concise answer.
- Being a blend of a conversational chat and a search engine, this tool allows follow-up questions to dig deeper or clarify the answers provided.
- To help users better understand the response in text format, SearchGPT can also generate images and videos either as a complement to the answer or as a direct response to a search query.
How is SearchGPT Different from ChatGPT?
At this point, much of the description of SearchGPT might seem very similar to ChatGPT. You may even wonder how the two OpenAI AI tools differ. Here’s the explanation.
ChatGPT is a conversational chat designed to respond to a wide range of questions based on general knowledge, as well as to offer ideas and assist with creative or technical processes. On the other hand, SearchGPT is more focused on searching for information sources online to provide them to the user, along with a clear response based on those sources. Therefore, it’s more useful for locating up-to-date, valuable information.
How Does SearchGPT Work?
SearchGPT is pretty straightforward to use. The first step, like with any AI chat, is to enter your question into the search bar. SearchGPT will immediately display a text-based answer (sometimes accompanied by images or videos) and provide the sources where the information was gathered, including links so users can visit them if they wish. This is particularly important for content writers who need reliable sources to build their articles.
Source: chatgpt.com/search
As of the time this article was published, SearchGPT is still in a testing phase, and access is limited to small groups of users. However, you can join the waitlist at this link to try the prototype. That said, there’s no clear timeline for when you’ll be able to try it.
In this stage, the developers are interested in having more users test SearchGPT to collect feedback and improve it. In fact, media outlets and organizations like The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press have contributed valuable feedback to enhance SearchGPT’s performance.
Additionally, OpenAI wants to give media publishers the ability to decide how their content appears in the tool’s search results. Publishers can even choose not to have their content used to train the AI behind the tool, which wouldn’t prevent it from still showing up as a source in search results.
However, the ultimate goal isn’t for SearchGPT to be an independent tool but to integrate it into ChatGPT. So, its existence as a standalone platform will be temporary, though it’s still unknown when this transition will happen or whether access will be free or not.
How Will It Impact SEO?
The reality is that tools like SearchGPT could pose a real threat to traditional search engines as we know them, potentially leading to a loss of users. In fact, Google and Microsoft (with its Bing search engine) have already integrated AI features to stay competitive against tools like this.
In this sense, if this technology succeeds and becomes widespread, the world of SEO could undergo much bigger changes than it has experienced so far. This is because if AI becomes the leading technology guiding user searches, the rules for ranking may change.
That’s not to say SEO will disappear, but the way we rank content on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) may change, as it’s important to note that with SearchGPT, there’s no need to use specific keywords. Instead, a more natural and conversational language can be used.
In other words, working on SEO will always be important since there will always be a way to rank one piece of information above another. However, as professionals, it’s crucial to stay updated on new developments to adapt our strategies.
Uses of SearchGPT in Digital Marketing
Now that you know what this tool is and what it’s capable of, we want to show you how you can take advantage of it once it becomes available to the general public. Below, we’ll share some potential uses of SearchGPT in digital marketing. Spoiler alert: it’s especially useful for copywriters and content writers.
- Source searching: Content writers can more quickly find reliable sources to base their writing on.
- Trend searching: Both strategists and content writers can use this AI as a great ally for finding relevant, current topics to potentially integrate into their social media or blog strategy.
- Concept searching: If you're a writer or copywriter who needs to understand a complex concept in a particular field to develop your content effectively, you can find a clear and concise answer to your questions using this tool, speeding up your creative process. And if you want to dig deeper, the tool will provide the sources for you to do so.
- Data understanding: This AI can also explain data using visual aids or graphs, which marketing strategists or any other professionals in this sector can use to better understand information.
