What OpenAI’s Research Reveals About The Future Of AI Search

The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 didn’t so much cause a shift in the search landscape as trigger a series of seismic events. And, like seismologists, the SEO industry needs data if it’s to predict future tremors and aftershocks – let alone prepare itself for what the landscape might reshape itself into once the ground has finally settled.

So, when OpenAI released a 65-page research paper on Sept. 15, 2025, titled “How People Use ChatGPT,” some of us were understandably excited to finally have some authoritative usage data from inside a major…