Only 0.3% of the Search Results ChatGPT Retrieves Are the Pages It Ends Up Citing

    ChatGPT retrieves 12.8 search results per answer and cites 2.9 sources, but only 0.3% of the retrieved results are the exact pages it cites. ChatGPT finds a website through search, then cites a different page on it: 68% of the websites it cites appear among the websites it retrieved.

    Result
    Retrieved results that exactly match a cited page
    0.3%
    Cited websites also found among retrieved websites
    68%

    Source: Suff Digital analysis of 138 ChatGPT answers with their retrieved search results · ChatGPT answers and the search results ChatGPT retrieved, September 2026

    Answers citing by most-retrieved websites
    nih.gov
    13
    clevelandclinic.org
    8
    cambridge.org
    7
    collinsdictionary.com
    5
    umn.edu
    4
    aad.org
    4
    hp.com
    4
    apple.com
    4

    Source: Suff Digital analysis of 138 ChatGPT answers with their retrieved search results · ChatGPT answers and the search results ChatGPT retrieved, September 2026

    Source: Only 0.3% of the Search Results ChatGPT Retrieves Are the Pages It Ends Up Citing - Suff Digital