Author: Ryan Walsh
Date: 20/05/2025

Introduction

Back in the day some people used Ask Jeeves whenever they had a question- do you remember that search engine?

Then, Yahoo eventually became all anybody used to use and talk about. If you had a question, such as how to remove that wine stain from a shirt today, we would instantly turn to Google to find the answer.

Therefore there’s been an evolution of search engines, and we think ChatGPT starting become more and more popular.

Google is still the dominant and leading search engine by far.

However, there’s a new emerging search in ChatGPT Search.

ChatGPT is no longer just a large language model (LLM) that doesn’t know up-to-date occurrences in the real world. For example, the data set it was trained on in the past often had a cut-off date, after that it would not have any further knowledge.

That’s all changed; ChatGPT is now live and has real-time data at its disposal. Therefore, people can now ask anything from the latest news stories in my area to what the weather is supposed to be like tomorrow.

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 1. API INGESTION & CONTEXT SET-UP │
│ • Receive HTTPS/REST request │
│ • Authenticate / rate-limit │
│ • Load prior conversation │
│ • Append new user message │
└───────────────┬────────────────────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│ 2. EARLY SANITISATION & MODERATION │ yes │ **BLOCK / WARN** (violates policy)│
│ • Normalise text (Unicode, trim) │────────┤ Stop & return error msg │
│ • Filter disallowed control chars │ └──────────────────────────────────┘
│ • Scan for banned content │ no
└───────────────┬─────────────────────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 3. TOKENISATION & EMBEDDING │
│ • Byte-Pair Encoding → tokens │
│ • Tokens → integer IDs │
│ • IDs → embedding vectors │
│ • Add positional encodings │
└───────────────┬─────────────────────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 4. TRANSFORMER INFERENCE (N layers) │
│ Loop per layer: │
│ ‣ LayerNorm │
│ ‣ Multi-Head Self-Attention │
│ ‣ Add & Norm (residual) │
│ ‣ Feed-Forward (Dense → GELU) │
│ ‣ Add & Norm (residual) │
└───────────────┬─────────────────────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 5. DECODING & SAMPLING LOOP │
│ •

 

Microsoft/ Bing

OpenAI uses Microsoft Bing, therefore it’s quite different from Google’s index.

Google has its index of websites.

Microsoft and Bing use their own index, it’s therefore very different. Marketing companies, like ours, thus need to be aware that it’s not just Googlebot that we make sure can crawl and index our work. Now we must consider whether Bing and Microsoft can crawl and index your website.

How high is your business ranking in Bing’s results?

Is your marketing company optimising for Bing and also Google?

What exactly is ChatGPT search?

ChatGPT search and how does this differ from Google’s AI

How does ChatGPT integrate into Microsoft Bing

How should marketing companies adapt their SEO strategies?

Conclusion

Tell me, what is ChatGPT Search?

As we mentioned earlier, ChatGPT was once offline.

 

Sure, you ask a question about the past.

For example, if you were to ask it before, “How tall is Big Ben?” Well, it knows that, but before it went live, ChatGPT wouldn’t be able to tell you the weather will be like next week, or how the FTSE 500 has done today.

However, things have now changed, and ChatGPT, well, it’s live, it’s got real-time data thanks to Bing’s index. It is also complemented by AI technology, allowing the user to ask real-time questions and follow up on previous ones.

This, therefore, is very much like Google Gemini works, which we think is fantastic by the way.

So, you may ask, “How big is Big Ben”?

That’s because you could be standing right in front of it.

Then you might ask, well, when was it built?

How much did it cost to build?

So, as you can see, it’s a chatbot powered by AI, that uses artificial intelligence, it’s also got a vast wealth of knowledge because it uses Bing’s Index.

OpenAI works directly with media organisations.

Remember, earlier when we said before this update, ChatGPT couldn’t tell you the latest news, well, all that’s now changed.

Chat GPT is up to date and live.

ChatGPT gets its news from global media organisations such as the Financial Times, Le Monde and Reuters, to name a few.

Therefore, if you were to ask us, we can see more and more people switching to using ChatGPT as it is live and has real-time information.

 

What’s the main difference between ChatGPT Search vs Google’s AI?

Google AI Overviews are becoming more and more commonly used.

However, Google SERP’s look the same, they have just added and integrated Google AI Overviews into the search results.

Therefore, the Google search results still function as they used to, but now they have a new feature: Google AI Overviews, providing AI technology and accurate answers in the search results.

We think adding Google AI Overviews is fantastic, as it helps shoppers to get an instant answer to a question directly answered in the SERP; s.

It also forces SEO companies worldwide to up their game.

What do we mean by such a statement?

We mean that as Google uses Google AI Overviews, this shows that, again, Google is rewarding businesses that write top-quality content marketing.

That’s because if your business’s content marketing answers the question better than anyone else, well, you could be provided with a backlink to your website, opening up the possibility of thousands of visitors visiting you, because your business is shown as a Google AI overview answer.

 

SEO is changing, and no one can stand still

Search engine optimisation is changing, for example, Google AI Overviews for one.

Then you have more people like how ChatGPT search works, and shopping habits may change as and it becomes a platform that more and more people buy from.

 

SEO agencies/freelancers need to adapt.

At an absolute minimum, you have to ensure that your website can get indexed by both Googlebot and GPTbot, if you want that page to appear in both sets of results.

Yet also, if you have been focusing on optimising for Google, you should now pivot and ensure your website is optimised for Microsoft Bing as well.

As people on the stock market will tell you, it’s a good idea to spread your bets.

Have a diversified portfolio, and this is the logic that many marketing companies are now taking, now not just optimising for one search engine, but also Microsoft Bing as well.

 

How can we help:

Times are changing, buying habits could change, and we could see more and more people buying products through ChatGPT.

One thing is for sure: here at Walsh & Partners, we have never let the grass grow beneath our feet. And we always like to keep our finger on the pulse. Therefore, if you are looking for a marketing business that helps your business improve its search engine optimisation, why not call us?