ChatGPT
ChatGPT is OpenAI's AI assistant. It answers questions in conversation, can search the web, and can show products and ads.
ChatGPT is the AI assistant made by OpenAI. People ask it questions in plain language and get a written answer back, often with links to the pages it read. It can also show product cards with prices when someone asks what to buy.
For many brands, it's the AI platform customers use most, so it's often where tracking starts. What it says when someone asks for a recommendation in your category is, for a lot of people, the first word on who to choose.
How it answers
ChatGPT answers some questions from what its model learned in training, and some by searching the web first. When it searches, it reads pages and links some of them in the answer. OpenAI says on its bots page that blocking its search bot, OAI-SearchBot, keeps a site out of those search answers.
The same question can get different answers. ChatGPT may remember a signed-in person's earlier chats and know their location, so what you see in your own account can differ from what a stranger sees.
Shopping and ads
When someone asks what to buy, ChatGPT can answer with product cards: a picture, a price and a link to buy. It also shows ads next to some answers.
For example, someone asks ChatGPT for a good coffee grinder under £100. The answer names three grinders, shows a product card for each with prices from two shops, and an advertiser's grinder sits below. Fernhill Coffee sells one of those grinders. Whether its card appears, and which shop it links to, is now part of the sale.
In AnswerOrbit
We ask ChatGPT each of your prompts every day, signed out, with web search on, from your prompt's market. ChatGPT picks the model. It's the only platform we read shopping results and ads from. See How we count, Shopping and Ads.