ChatGPT search is now live – and it could be the Google replacement you’ve been looking for

We’ve been hearing rumors about a ChatGPT search engine for a while now, but now it’s finally live. Rather than being a whole new website called ‘SearchGPT’, as many had expected, it’s simply an upgrade to the existing ChatGPT website, and all the ChatGPT apps for Windows, Mac, and smartphones.

When you are talking to ChatGPT it will now ask you if it should search the web, if it feels that would produce better results for you, but you can also manually instigate a web search at any time. As you’d expect, ChatGPT search is a feature that’s available immediately for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, and all ChatGPT Plus and Team users will get it today. However, all SearchGPT waitlist users will also be getting access today. Enterprise and Edu users of ChatGPT will be getting access over the next few weeks.

A laptop screen showing ChatGPT search examples — A new Citations bar will open on the right of the window when you click a source link. (Image credit: OpenAI)

How it works

If you look at your ChatGPT prompt bar you’ll see a new search icon called Search. Tap or click this and you will be searching the web using ChatGPT, rather than engaging in a conversation. It’s a bit like the AI summaries that Google already provides in its search engine, but there is an easily identifiable link to sources after each piece of text. When clicked, the sources open up a sidebar that shows citations.

In case you were wondering, the waitlist for SearchGPT is now closed, so if you haven’t already signed up, it’s now too late. As for when the rest of the ChatGPT free tier will get it, OpenAI says, “We’ll roll out to all Free users over the coming months.”

A laptop screen showing ChatGPT search examples

ChatGPT search is perfect for all the jobs you’d normally use Google for. (Image credit: OpenAI)

What’s interesting is that ChatGPT has partnered with various industry sources to provide its own maps, that aren’t Google Maps, as well as weather, stocks, sports, and news information. OpenAI says it has “partnered with news and data providers to add up-to-date information and new visual designs for categories like weather, stocks, sports, news, and maps.”

ChatGPT Search is already looking enticing and could be the first real threat to Google in years. With ChatGPT Search, you’re essentially getting the natural language capabilities of ChatGPT blended with up-to-the-minute information from the web, and that could be just what people are searching for.