What we measured ·
What Google shows for "where does chatgpt get its information" right now
Method: Live Google results (United States, desktop, English) for "where does chatgpt get its information" retrieved through DataForSEO's SERP API on 2026-10-22. Page types are our own classification of each ranking URL.
The top 9 organic results for "where does chatgpt get its information" were 4 product or service pages, 2 forum or community threads, 1 encyclopedia, 1 guide or explainer, 1 video. The first three were www.linkedin.com, en.wikipedia.org, www.reddit.com. Community threads (www.reddit.com, www.quora.com) ranked on page one, a sign searchers want first-hand answers, not only vendor pages.
Google showed an AI Overview for this query, citing 8 source domains including www.reddit.com, help.openai.com, www.facebook.com, www.sianamarketing.com. Pages that state the answer directly and early are the ones an Overview can quote.
People Also Ask listed: "Does ChatGPT share your information with the government?"; "How is data used in AI systems?"; "Where does Google get their info from?"; "Where does AI get its facts?". The sections below answer the ones within this page's scope.
| Position | Domain | Page type |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | www.linkedin.com | Product or service page |
| 2 | en.wikipedia.org | Encyclopedia |
| 3 | www.reddit.com | Forum or community thread |
| 4 | zapier.com | Guide or explainer |
| 5 | medium.com | Product or service page |
| 6 | www.youtube.com | Video |
Source 1: what the model learned in training
The underlying models are trained on a mix of publicly available text, licensed data, and data created to improve the model, then refined with human feedback. That training gives broad knowledge but has a cutoff date and no live view of the web. Answers drawn only from training can be outdated, cannot reliably name their sources, and may state plausible details that are wrong.
Source 2: live web search
When a question needs current information, or a user asks it to search, ChatGPT retrieves web results and writes an answer from them, usually with inline citations. This is the path that can mention and link to your site. It depends on OpenAI's search systems being able to find and fetch the page; OpenAI publishes the user agents it uses, including OAI-SearchBot for search and ChatGPT-User for fetches a user triggers.
Because many AI crawlers read raw HTML without running JavaScript, a page whose content is rendered only in the browser can be effectively blank to this path.
Source 3: the user's own context
Memory, custom instructions, earlier messages in the conversation, uploaded files, and connected apps all shape an answer. Two people asking the same question can get different answers for this reason alone, before randomness in generation is even considered.
Which sources can cite your website
The table summarises what a site owner can influence.
| Source | Can cite your site? | What you can influence |
|---|---|---|
| Training data | Rarely, and not as a live link | Being widely and accurately described over time |
| Live search | Yes, with links | Crawler access, static HTML, clear answers, being findable |
| User memory and files | Only if the user supplies your content | Nothing directly |
| Connected apps | Only within that app's data | Nothing directly |
What site owners can do
Decide your robots.txt policy deliberately: allowing OAI-SearchBot keeps you eligible for ChatGPT search citations, while GPTBot governs training use and is a separate choice. Make sure key pages serve their full content in HTML. State answers directly near the top of pages. And track a fixed set of prompts over time, because a single test tells you little. Our free AI crawler access checker shows which AI user agents your robots.txt currently allows. SerionFlow is the wrong tool for controlling what ChatGPT says; it can publish clear pages on your domain, but no tool decides which sources an assistant retrieves.
Clear answers
Frequently asked questions
Where does AI get its facts?
+
Large language models get general knowledge from training data and, when connected to search, current facts from the pages they retrieve. Retrieved answers are more checkable because they can cite sources.
Does ChatGPT read my website in real time?
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Only when it uses search or a user asks it to open a page, and only if your site allows the relevant crawler and serves readable HTML.
About the author
Shadrack Kumi · Founder, SerionFlow
Shadrack builds SerionFlow's site research, page generation, and Search Console tooling, and runs the free tools these guides pair with. Search Console figures cited on these pages come from serionflow.com's own property.
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