Does Google's AI Overviews rely more on our existing organic-ranking signals than ChatGPT does, meaning our regular SEO work matters more for one engine than the other?
Short answer
Google's AI Overviews lean directly on Google's ranking signals; ChatGPT leans on organic ranking only in part. Google's AI features retrieve pages by "relying on our core Search ranking systems" (Google Search Central, October 2026). ChatGPT search uses OpenAI's crawler and sometimes partner search providers (OpenAI Help Center, October 2026). OpenAI documents no use of Google's rankings. So ranking work pays twice on Google, once elsewhere.
- What AI Overviews draw on
- Google's core ranking systems and indexGoogle says its generative AI features retrieve pages from its Search index through its core Search ranking systems (Google Search Central, October 2026).Source: Google Search Central (Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search)
- What ChatGPT search draws on
- OAI-SearchBot plus partner search providersChatGPT search sometimes sends rewritten queries to other search providers, then ranks results on its own factors (OpenAI Help Center, October 2026).Sources: OpenAI Help Center (Searching the web with ChatGPT); OpenAI (Overview of OpenAI Crawlers)
- Opting out of Google AI features
- Search Console control, included by defaultExcluding a site removes it from AI Overviews and AI Mode without affecting other Search results; rolled out to all websites by 31 August 2026 (Search Console Help, October 2026).Source: Search Console Help (Search generative AI control)
- Opting out of ChatGPT search
- Disallow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txtOpted-out sites are not shown in ChatGPT search answers, and a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to register (OpenAI, October 2026).Source: OpenAI (Overview of OpenAI Crawlers)
Deploi’s call
Yes: regular search engine optimization (SEO) work pays more on Google's AI Overviews than on ChatGPT. So fund SEO as the base layer and AI visibility as a measurement layer on top. Reversing that order is how stores end up with a dashboard full of AI metrics and no underlying pages worth citing.
CustomizeFund SEO first and measure AI on top when
- Your category still draws Google searches, because AI Overviews and AI Mode retrieve pages through Google's core ranking systems (Google Search Central, October 2026).
- Your pages rank for the main search term but not for the sub-questions buyers ask, which query fan-out searches separately (Google Search Central, October 2026).
- You follow Deploi's AI answer engine visibility record, scored CUSTOMIZE in September 2026: technical hygiene, then a prompt panel, a fixed set of buyer questions run in each engine, and citable content.
WaitHold a separate ChatGPT program while
- OpenAI's search crawler is blocked on your site. Fix robots.txt first; a change takes about 24 hours to register (OpenAI, October 2026).
- Your measurement shows no ChatGPT gap that your Google rankings do not already explain.
- A vendor pitches generative engine optimization (GEO) as a separate discipline. Google calls optimizing for its generative AI search "still SEO" (Google Search Central, October 2026).
Basis: Build or Buy AI Answer Engine Visibility (GEO/AEO) on Shopify?, our Build vs. Buy decision record, scored CUSTOMIZE.
Does Google's AI Overviews rely more on organic ranking than ChatGPT does?
Yes: Google's AI Overviews rely directly on Google's organic ranking, and ChatGPT relies on organic ranking only in part. OpenAI documents no use of Google's rankings. Google says its generative AI features retrieve "relevant, up-to-date web pages from our Search index" by "relying on our core Search ranking systems" (Google Search Central, October 2026). ChatGPT search ranks results on its own factors, using OpenAI's crawl and queries it sometimes sends to partner search providers (OpenAI Help Center, October 2026). One product page can serve ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini alike, so what differs is how far your rankings carry.
| Criterion | Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | ChatGPT search |
|---|---|---|
| Where pages come from | Google's Search index, through its core ranking systems | OpenAI's search crawler, plus partner search providers |
| Does your Google ranking carry over? | Directly | Not directly; OpenAI documents no use of Google's rankings |
| Site-level opt-out | Search Console's generative AI control | Disallow OpenAI's search crawler in robots.txt, about 24 hours to register |
| Page-level controls | nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, noindex | noindex meta tag, read only if the crawler may fetch the page |
Why does ranking work pay twice on Google?
Ranking work pays twice on Google because the same ranking systems earn the classic result and the AI Overview link. A link in AI Overviews or AI Mode needs a page that is "indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet" (Google Search Central, October 2026). Google calls its generative AI features "rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems" (Google Search Central, October 2026). So there is no second ranking system to optimize for.
The second payment needs no opt-in, because every site is included by default. Search Console's generative AI control lets a site exclude its links and content from AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says the control "isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search" (Search Console Help, October 2026). Google rolled the control out to all websites by 31 August 2026, so check that nobody on your team has switched it off. Which traditional search signals still count has its own answer.
How does query fan-out change which queries you need to rank for?
Query fan-out means an AI Overview can draw on pages that rank for the sub-questions around a search, not only for the search itself. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode may issue "multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources" to build a response (Google Search Central, October 2026). Google's own example: a search for fixing a lawn full of weeds fans out to "best herbicides for lawns", "remove weeds without chemicals" and "how to prevent weeds in lawn" (Google Search Central, October 2026).
So, in our judgment, a page that ranks for the main search term but not for the sub-questions buyers ask can lose the Overview to a competitor that answers them. Cover those sub-questions inside pages that help a buyer decide, such as a category buyer's guide. Do not publish a page per fan-out query. Google says doing that primarily to manipulate its AI responses violates its scaled content abuse policy, and that its AI systems understand synonyms without a page per phrasing (Google Search Central, October 2026).
What does ChatGPT reward if not your Google ranking?
ChatGPT rewards crawl access first and page substance second, because its search runs on OpenAI's own crawl, its own ranking and partner search providers. OpenAI says "Any public website can appear in ChatGPT search" if it does not block OpenAI's search crawler (OpenAI Help Center, October 2026). ChatGPT then ranks results on "multiple factors intended to help users find relevant, reliable information" (OpenAI Help Center, October 2026). Under "Information shared with search providers", OpenAI points to Microsoft's and Shopify's privacy policies for "how search providers may process queries", but it does not say what either company supplies (OpenAI Help Center, October 2026). In our reading, that link places Microsoft's search among ChatGPT's partners, so rankings there can carry some of your search work into ChatGPT. OpenAI does not say how much.
"ChatGPT doesn't use Google" gets read as "search engine optimization (SEO) doesn't matter for ChatGPT." That reading is wrong, because the signals that make a page rank, such as genuine substance, clean structure and a crawlable page, make it usable to any retriever. Different system, same hygiene.
When is moving SEO budget to ChatGPT the wrong move?
Moving search engine optimization (SEO) budget into a ChatGPT program is the wrong move in four situations, because each one skips the base layer that both engines read.
Deploi’s point of view
Our own position, from building on Shopify. Kept apart from the sourced facts above.
- Where we disagree
- The generative engine optimization (GEO) vendor pitch positions AI search as a replacement discipline needing a new budget and new tooling. Google published the opposite in its own documentation: the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features, and optimizing for its generative AI search is still SEO. We take Google at its word here.
- What we check first
- whether product content sits in the page's source or only inside markup an app injects with JavaScript. Google says it can process JavaScript content as long as it isn't blocked; OpenAI does not say whether its crawler runs JavaScript. In our judgment, app-injected product content is the first gap to close for ChatGPT.
- What this page adds
- that the two engines diverge on ranking dependency specifically, that ChatGPT search also draws on partner search providers, and that query fan-out changes which sub-questions you need to rank for.
Decision records behind this answer
When this answer changes
- Google changes how AI Overviews or AI Mode select links, or stops grounding them in its core ranking systems.
- OpenAI names the partner search providers behind ChatGPT search, or stops using them.
- Google changes the Search Console generative AI control, or what excluding a site does.
- OpenAI publishes how ChatGPT search ranks results, or how often OAI-SearchBot recrawls a site.
- Google's Generative AI performance report starts showing clicks, or splits AI Overviews from AI Mode.
Related questions
- Do AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Gemini still use traditional SEO signals (meta titles, schema, backlinks), or do they rely on something else entirely?
Yes: AI answer engines still lean on traditional search engine optimization (SEO) signals, because they retrieve pages through search.
- Does publishing an actual buyer's guide for our product category help more than optimizing individual product pages?
A category buyer's guide helps more than product-page work only on research prompts, and product pages win purchase prompts, in Deploi's judgment.
- Should we budget AI-search optimization as its own line item, separate from our existing SEO/content budget?
Yes: AI search optimization earns its own budget line, because search engine optimization (SEO) reporting would hide its cost and most of its result.
Sources
Every figure on this page traces to one of these. Official and vendor pages are checked on the date shown; Deploi records are our own published decisions.
- Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website
- OpenAI Help Center, Searching the web with ChatGPT
- OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers
- OpenAI Help Center, Publishers and Developers FAQ
- Search Console Help, Search generative AI control
- Search Console Help, Generative AI performance report (Search)
- Deploi Build vs. Buy, Build or Buy AI Answer Engine Visibility (GEO/AEO) on Shopify?