ChatGPT Plus Is Secretly Google-Powered—My Experimental Proof

• A paid ChatGPT search uses Google Search.
  • A dummy page indexed only in Google showed up in ChatGPT Plus results within hours.
  • The same query in Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. still returns zero results.
• Free ChatGPT ≠ Google or Bing. The results from ChatGPT barely overlap with either search engine, which is likely due to OpenAI’s own experimental index.
• OpenAI’s docs list “Bing & Shopify” as third-party search partners but never mention Google.
• For SEOs, that means ranking in Google is now a prerequisite for ranking inside ChatGPT answers.

Proof #1—Sting-page proof

I coined a nonsense word. In my case it was “Folubito Phionito”.

I checked the query “Folubito Phionito” Google in SERP:

Then I checked Bing with the same query:

As you can see, any relevant result to “Folubito Phionito”

I asked ChatGPT (free one and paid one version) to define my hidden term:

As you can see, the search results were empty. We have not found any references to the topic or any links here. I have heard that there is a paid version of ChatGPT, which offers a deeper search capability. I tried both methods, but neither provided any answers.

I then put it on a page not linked anywhere. It was necessary to create something new for my query. I just created a post: https://www.seo-bazooka.com/folubito-phionito-effect/. Okay, so we have a page, but it was out of Google’s index.

Then I forced Google to index it via Search Console. All other engines, like Bing or DuckDuckGo, were not pinged.

I recheck my exact phrase in search and find only my result in SERP:

So in 2 hours, it was finally indexed on Google. Now it’s time to proceed to the next step.

I asked ChatGPT Plus to define the term, and it quoted my hidden page https://www.seo-bazooka.com/folubito-phionito-effect/ verbatim.

As you can see, it has a reference from my page and an exact citation of my content.

But when I asked for the free version of ChatGPT on the same day, I got another answer:

So again, there are no references or citations in any text from my page.

Ran the same query in Bing and DDG → no results

So here is the thing. ChatGPT used Google to search for something and found it. ChatGPT may have also used Bing, but its usage is not as significant as that of Google.

What this means for SEO specialists like me:

• SEO & AEO converge again. If you don’t rank in Google, you probably won’t surface in ChatGPT answers.
• Privacy. Paid users’ prompts are silently routed to Google servers, despite no public partnership announcement.
• Using free ChatGPT provides different sources than Plus version.

Once I receive new data, I will update this post.

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share your experience or ask any questions in the comments below.