ChatGPT Web Searches Plummet For Anonymous Users

A Sharp Decline in ChatGPTs Web Use

Recent data from the SEO platform SISTRIX indicates a startling change in how ChatGPT interacts with the web. According to their daily analysis, ChatGPT is using live web searches far less often for anonymous users—those using the service without an account.

Over just two weeks, the proportion of answers that utilized a live web search fell dramatically from over 15% to below 2.5%. SISTRIX has not identified a specific cause for this steep drop, noting only that the observation applies to these non-logged-in sessions.

Exploring Potential Industry Factors

While the exact reason remains unknown, this change occurs amidst several relevant shifts in the search and AI landscape. It is important to view these as context rather than confirmed causes.

• Microsoft Retires Bing Search APIs: Microsoft officially retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11. Since ChatGPT has historically used Bing for web lookups, this ecosystem shift is noteworthy.
• Google Changes SERP Access: Google has made it more difficult to collect search results at scale. As documented by SISTRIX, Google no longer supports the “num=100” parameter, which increases the effort needed to gather SERP data.
• Recent ChatGPT Updates: OpenAI's own release notes from September 16 mention “improvements to search in ChatGPT,” though no specifics on backend changes were provided.

What This Means for Anonymous Users

If ChatGPT is consulting the web less for anonymous sessions, those users may notice a difference. You might see fewer responses that cite current events or recently published sources. Instead, the model could rely more heavily on its internal knowledge base.

This could particularly impact answers related to news or recent developments for users who are not logged in. The behavior for paid Plus or Enterprise accounts may be entirely different.

An Observation to Monitor

The findings from SISTRIX are a snapshot limited to a specific timeframe and user type. As of now, OpenAI has not confirmed any changes to how frequently ChatGPT performs live lookups.

The most prudent takeaway is that an independent measurement has shown a significant short-term decline. This is a trend that deserves further observation and testing to understand its full scope.