What does ChatGPT search for before recommending brands?

A searched brand is a brand that ChatGPT named in one of its own search queries although the question did not name it. We count it only when that brand also appears in the answer. A search names a brand when the brand name appears as whole words in the query, or when the query is a site: lookup on the brand's website.

From September 29 to October 6, 79.1% of gpt-5-6 answers that named brands had at least one searched brand, 2.6 per answer on average. From January to March the share was 16.7% for gpt-5-2 and 16.6% for gpt-5-mini. On the same 627 prompts answered by all three models the shares were 76.7%, 18.1%, and 17.9%.

In 60.5% of gpt-5-6 answers, the first brand ChatGPT named was a searched brand. For gpt-5-2 it was 12.3%.

Searched brands were named first 23.4% of the time. Brands that appeared in the answer without being searched were named first 10.9% of the time. Brands named in the very first query were named first 26.5% of the time. We cannot tell the direction: ChatGPT may search for a brand because it already plans to recommend it.

For the 30 brands ChatGPT searched by name in the most gpt-5-6 answers, we compared how often it was named first when ChatGPT searched for it and when it appeared in the answer without a search. Most brands were named first far more often when searched: PagerDuty 51.2% against 8.9%, Notion 36.1% against 3.1%, HubSpot 31.8% against 6.7%.

Two brands run the other way. Microsoft was named first 10.4% of the time when searched and 11.3% when not. Atlassian was 5.6% against 8.7%. Wise, Remitly, and Rootly are left out of the table because fewer than 50 answers named them without a search.

A search query here is the text ChatGPT sends to a web search engine while it writes an answer. A site: lookup is a search query limited to one website, such as "site:hubspot.com pricing CRM".

From September 29 to October 6, 2026, 32.6% of the 160,737 search queries ChatGPT Search ran with gpt-5-6 were site: lookups. From January to March 2026, with gpt-5-2 and gpt-5-mini, the share was 0.01%. At the answer level, 13,253 of 44,457 answers, or 29.8%, ran at least one site: lookup.

We counted the words a search query adds that the question did not contain. With gpt-5-6, 25.6% of queries added "official" and 15.2% added "2026". With gpt-5-2 in January to March, those shares were 0.05% and 1.8%.

The shopping words went the other way. "Best" fell from 9.6% to 4.3% of queries, "review" from 7.4% to 1.2%, "top" from 6.1% to 0.05%, and "alternative" or "compare" from 6.7% to 0.6%. ChatGPT used to search for ranked lists. It now searches for primary sources.

An April 2026 study by Peec AI measured 2.1 searches per prompt for ChatGPT and found the current year added to 5.44% of searches. In our September 29 to October 6 window, gpt-5-6 averaged 3.6 searches per answer and added 2026 to 15.2% of them.

Word overlap is the share of distinct words, common words removed, that appear in both the question and the searches for it. With gpt-5-6 it averaged 0.23. With gpt-5-2 it averaged 0.45.

In gpt-5-6 searches, 69.6% of the words were not in the question, and 53.3% of the question's words were left out of every search. The questions averaged 19.6 words and the searches 10.4 words. ChatGPT writes its own search queries. It does not pass the question through.

To separate the model change from a change in which prompts were asked, we kept the 627 prompts that were answered in both windows. gpt-5-6 ran 3.02 searches per answer, against 2.29 for gpt-5-2 and 2.30 for gpt-5-mini.

On these prompts, 21.7% of gpt-5-6 answers ran a site: lookup and 54.0% added a year to a search. For gpt-5-2 the shares were 0.01% and 7.3%. The figures across all prompts point the same way, so the change is not an artifact of the prompt mix.

gpt-5-6 answers that ran one search averaged 3,538 characters and 4.2 citations. Answers that ran six or more averaged 6,937 characters and 9.6 citations. The number of brands moved less, from 6.1 to 8.0, and three-search answers named the fewest (5.0).

Within the same prompt, an answer that searched more than usual was longer (correlation 0.37) and cited more (0.33), but named about the same number of brands (0.03). Extra searches go into depth on the brands already chosen.

We paired answers to the same prompt on consecutive days. With gpt-5-6, only 0.39% of 5,080 pairs ran the same set of searches. Word overlap between the two days' searches averaged 0.53.

The brands changed about as much. The two answers shared 40.5% of their brands on average and named the same brand first 49.7% of the time. The query wording changes more from day to day than the recommendations do.

We grouped next-day pairs by how much their searches overlapped and measured how many brands the two answers shared. Where the searches shared under a quarter of their words, the answers shared 26.7% of their brands. Where they shared three quarters or more, the answers shared 49.7%.

The same pattern held for gpt-5-2 in January to March: 31.2% rising to 45.6%. What ChatGPT searches for on a given day is a large part of why its recommendations move.

Search queries are recorded in the Parse index only for some periods. From May through September 28, 2026, the stored search text for ChatGPT Search answers was the question itself in at least 96.5% of answers in every month, and for Google AI Mode in 99.6% to 99.8%. That is a recording limit, not engine behavior, so this study excludes that period and Google AI Mode entirely. Readers of earlier Parse work that described ChatGPT Search as running one search, the prompt itself, should read it in this light.

The study uses January to March 2026 (gpt-5-2 and gpt-5-mini, a 25% sample of prompts) and September 29 to October 6, 2026 (gpt-5-6). The jump to more than three searches per answer on September 29 came from a change in recording, not in the model: the gpt-5-6 label was already in use in August, and on October 2 the stored text briefly reverted to the question. April 2026 is excluded because it recorded exactly one search in 99.6% of answers, which we could not confirm. Any search equal to the question was removed before counting. Brand names were matched as whole words or by website for site: lookups. All figures are an observed cut of the Parse index over the stated windows; the last window is eight days long.

ChatGPT now writes its own searches, and in 79% of answers they name a brand the buyer did not. One in three searches is a site: lookup on one website, one in four asks for "official" sources, and one in seven adds the current year. Third-party "best" and "review" lists are searched for less often than in the spring.

Three moves follow. Make sure the pages ChatGPT looks up on your own website (pricing, features, documentation, integrations) answer buyer questions directly and carry the current year where it is true. Get your brand named in the category pages ChatGPT's first, broad search returns, because brands named in that first search are named first most often. And track your AI visibility over many days: ChatGPT rewrites its searches daily, and its brand picks move with them.