Looking to the future of AI Search, Brick Digital’s Head of SEO Adam Smith explains the current ranking factors of ChatGPT, including the importance of resources, recommendations and holistic online marketing in order to rank successfully.
Lately, our clients have been asking questions around the ranking factors of ChatGPT and other AI Search Engines, and with good reason; the technology is advancing quickly, and may soon evolve into a key platform for search. With this in mind, it’s important that we, as an SEO Agency, educate ourselves on the matter. Even more important, however, is that we take a moment to share what we’ve learned, because as the saying goes, “knowledge shared is knowledge squared”.
We’ll be focussing on ChatGPT in this article, given that it’s the market leader, but if you have questions about Claude, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Gemini or even Midjourney, and the ranking factors of these specific platforms, feel free to get in touch to arrange a consultation.
Search Data
In December 2024, OpenAI made ChatGPT’s search function available to non-paid user accounts for the first time, increasing referral traffic for many of our clients and putting them ahead of referrals from other AI Search Engines. While this could be interpreted as a primarily strategic move from OpenAI to keep their platform ahead of the competition, it also provided us with more data.
At the time of writing, there’s currently no way to extract keyword data from AI Search Engines. That may change in the not-too-distant future, but for now, we still have access to Landing Page data. By understanding user journeys – what they search for, why they search for it and which pages they would land on – we can begin to optimise websites for a future of AI Search.
Thankfully, this isn’t entirely dissimilar from ranking in Google, which makes the process less “alien”. That said, since businesses tend to focus on writing and ranking service pages on their websites, rather than supporting ‘top of funnel’ content, they run the risk of missing out on AI Search traffic.
This is because the majority of AI interactions are conversational in nature, compared with the 2-3 word search terms we’re used to entering in platforms like Google. We could search for “financial advice” in google, but we’re more likely to ask AI, in a more longform manner something along the lines of “This is my financial situation. I want to achieve X. How do I go about doing this?”, usually with the expectation of having a conversation where we may ask further questions.
From our research, we believe that this is why we see AI referral traffic landing on very specific product or information pages.
Conversation Search
The biggest USP of ChatGPT (and indeed, other AI platforms) is the ability to ask detailed questions and receive, in return, detailed and specific responses, presented in a conversational manner and often with follow-up questions that deepen the exploration of the topic.
However, we have observed that when topics are raised for which more information is readily available online, ChatGPT becomes more helpful and offers more enriched, accurate and up-to-date responses. Conversely, when less information is available, or when information conflicts, responses become less accurate and more limited.
For example, ChatGPT is able to deliver a wealth of expertise regarding consumer rights, employee rights and personal finance, thanks to extremely well-established documentation on websites like moneysavingexpert.com, which it will often link to in responses.
On the other hand, asking ChatGPT to explain the rules of a tabletop game (a strange comparison, but two of our staff are tabletop game enthusiasts!) produces mixed, often inaccurate results. This is due to conflicts in opinion and interpretation from the online resources it draws from – more likely to be a smaller pool of YouTube influencers and casual bloggers expressing their opinions, rather than professional websites and resources citing fact.
Naturally, it would be beneficial to see how much AI referral traffic ChatGPT and other platforms are being sent to landing pages as a result of this.
Our Research
In addition to our day-to-day use of ChatGPT and other AI tools, our insights also come from an early study commissioned by one of our clients. As part of our research, we asked ChatGPT a series of questions at different stages of the end-to-end user journey and lifecycle of a typical audience member of the client. These were written as complex questions rather than keyword searches, mimicking the more common, conversational tone we tend to take with AI; explaining our situation, objectives and challenges as part of the prompt.
ChatGPT provided step-by-step solutions to each scenario, often recommending online resources and/or suppliers for later reference, if needed. While not the case in every test, it would typically do this without being prompted.
When asked why it had chosen to reference or suggest specific websites, ChatGPT openly advised of its ranking factors – it had searched Google’s SERPs, weighed the value of results based on a number of ‘trust’ factors across the internet as a whole, and then made recommendations based on the results.
ChatGPT Search Ranking Factors
Google Rankings
Our study revealed that ChatGPT assesses Google search engine rankings, making 3-5 recommendations based on a number of other factors, outlined below.
Brand Mentions
How often the brand or product is mentioned around the web in relevant content related to the enquiry.We have also seen evidence of this becoming a ranking factor in Google for some generic, high volume search terms recently, but that’s an area we’ll cover in a future blog post.
Recommendations
The number or positive reviews and overall review scores around the web. In addition to Trustpilot, Amazon and a company’s own website, this also includes recommendations and reviews from blogs and niche websites. We observed that ChatGPT also gleaned specific USPs from the content of these reviews, which also influenced its recommendations.
Resources
Websites featuring supporting content, guides, tools and other helpful resources were typically recommended above others. This included free trials, free demos and free samples.
Domain
Some SEO agencies have identified that Domain Authority and age are also ChatGPT ranking factors, but our research suggests that these are just correlations; the websites of “household names” (for example, Ikea) will have have a higher volume of brand mentions and reviews across the web, and are likely to have invested in creating a wealth of useful resources.
Conclusion
In addition to boosting your Google rankings, having a great product or service, supporting resources, positive customer reviews and a balance of recommendations on niche-relevant and authoritative websites makes you more likely to be recommended by ChatGPT.
Due to the “conversations” users are having with ChatGPT and other AI tools, we expect to see greater value in supporting users at every step of their journey, not just the step before they come to your website to convert.
For years, Google has encouraged companies to engage in holistic online marketing, but never really seemed to reward it. Now, it seems ChatGPT may be moving toward rewarding this behaviour and, in return, rewarding companies who follow a new form of “best practise”.
