OpenAI drops sign in requirement for ChatGPT search

You no longer need to login or create an account to use ChatGPT Search from OpenAI. You can now just use ChatGPT without an account.

The announcement. OpenAI announced this on X, saying:

ChatGPT search is now available to everyone on http://chatgpt.com — no sign up required.

More details. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search in October 2024 and then made it free for all users in mid-December. Now, you don’t even need an account to use ChatGPT Search.

How it works. According to OpenAI:

• “The search model is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques, including distilling outputs from OpenAI o1-preview. ChatGPT search leverages third-party search providers, as well as content provided directly by our partners, to provide the information users are looking for.”

One of those third-party search providers is Microsoft Bing. Based on its ChatGPT search help document, OpenAI is sharing search query and location data with Microsoft.

Why we care. Now that you no longer need an account to search the web with ChatGPT, it might pose more of a challenge for Google and other search engines.

As we said before, referal traffic from ChatGPT continues to grow every month. ChatGPT search won’t dethrone Google’s search monopoly anytime soon. However, if ChatGPT search adoption accelerates, as it likely will now that it’s open to all ChatGPT users, it could soon find itself owning 1% of the search market share. Brands, businesses and creators better be ready for this shift.