ChatGPT and Search

Istvan "RTML" Siposs
By Istvan Siposs, 2024-11-25

With the rapid advancement of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, the traditional web search landscape is changing. Some say Google's dominance in this area is soon to be over - although this remains to be seen. ChatGPT recently introduced web search into it's offerings and with over 200 million users this is definitely something e-commerce sites need to take note of.

Google also started aggressively integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their search engines, for example by including AI Overviews - summaries at the top of search pages.

So how can you optimize your site to ensure ChatGPT includes it in its search results?

Optimize for Bing

Since Google has long dominated the web search space, we've traditionally focused all our search engine optimization efforts there. However, as of now, the new ChatGPT search tool pulls its information from Bing. This means that, at a minimum, you'll need to start paying attention to your ranking on Bing as well.

Quality Information

Of course, this comes as no surprise--your site needs to provide relevant, quality information. Copying and pasting your suppliers' titles and descriptions never worked, and now it's more important than ever. Offer insights, reviews, how-to guides--whatever you can to provide something extra that your competition doesn't.

Structured Data is Important

I'm still surprised to come across stores without structured data embedded in their pages. What is structured data? It's a piece of code within your store's pages that tells search engines what's what on the page. This block of information, while not directly visible to shoppers, contains all the relevant details about your products or pages in a clearly defined, structured format (hence the name) to help search engines find it more easily. It includes things like product price, images, descriptions, product condition, brand, and more. There are tons of attributes you can include, and the more you add to your page's structured data, the better.

You can take any product from your store and test it using Google's Rich Results Testing Tool to check if it supports rich results. If your store doesn't have rich results, set them up ASAP.

Readable Content

AI tends to prefer shorter, clearer sentences over long, wordy ones. Focus on creating content that's easy to scan, read, and understand. Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind:

  • Stick to one idea per sentence. Break up complex sentences into shorter ones.
  • Use active voice instead of passive voice.
  • Be mindful of word count. Aim for 15 to 20 words per sentence.

The above are factors you can directly control. NP Digital analyzed 82 factors that influence ChatGPT's rankings. While these aren't easy to influence, they identified the following six as the most important:

  1. Brand Mentions: the more your brand (or store) is mentioned across the web, the more likely ChatGPT is to recommend it.
  2. Reviews: the more (positive) reviews your store has, the better--again, a no-brainer. ChatGPT appears to consider reviews both on your site and on third-party platforms like TrustPilot, BBB, Amazon, Google Reviews, and others.
  3. Relevancy: for obvious reasons, if your store pages are more relevant to a query than others, they'll be recommended over the rest.
  4. Age: the longer a site has been in business, the better its chances of being included in the results.
  5. Recommendations: this ties in with “Reviews” above, but the more sites that recommend yours, the better.
  6. Authority: the more authoritative your company is in your niche, the more likely ChatGPT is to recommend it.

** Sources: ChatGPT Search -- The Ranking Factors We Know So Far by Exposure Ninja, How to Rank Your Website on ChatGPT by Neil Patell.