Bing to be default search engine on Open AI’s ChatGPT

By Barry Schwartz

Published: May 23, 2023 at 11:48 am

Bing Search is the default search engine on Open AI’s popular ChatGPT service, Microsoft announced today. Microsoft said that Bing is now the default search experience on ChatGPT.

Who will see it. First ChatGPT Plus subscribers will begin to see Bing Search as an option starting today. Then free users of ChatGPT will “soon” be able to use it by enabling a plugin.

What it does. This will give ChatGPT more up-to-date information and timely information powered by Bing Search. ChatGPT has a data set from 2021 or earlier, which is why using Bing Chat provided a better experience for more timely questions.

Now, with Bing Search in ChatGPT, the service can “provide timelier and more up-to-date answers with access from the web,” the company wrote.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot showing how it is enabled for Plus subscribers:

Why we care. This should help make ChatGPT even more useful to searchers and people with questions. It will be interesting to compare ChatGPT with Bing Search against Bing Chat and see how each flavor of answers differ.

So for you Plus subscribers, you can now give Bing Search a try directly in ChatGPT.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.