{"id":109660,"date":"2025-08-01T07:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/109660\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T07:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:25:09","slug":"your-public-chatgpt-queries-are-getting-indexed-by-google-and-other-search-engines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/109660\/","title":{"rendered":"Your public ChatGPT queries are getting indexed by Google and other search engines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update 7\/31\/25 4:10pm PT: Hours after this article was published, OpenAI said it removed the feature<\/a> from ChatGPT that allowed users to make their public conversations discoverable by search engines. The company says this was a short-lived experiment that ultimately \u201cintroduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn\u2019t intend to.\u201d The original story follows.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange glimpse into the human mind: If you filter search results<\/a> on Google, Bing, and other search engines to only include URLs from the domain \u201chttps:\/\/chatgpt.com\/share,\u201d you can find strangers\u2019 conversations with ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, these shared conversation links are pretty dull \u2014 people ask for help renovating their bathroom<\/a>, understanding astrophysics<\/a>, and finding recipe ideas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In another case, one user asks ChatGPT to rewrite their resume for a particular job application (judging by this person\u2019s LinkedIn, which was easy to find based on the details in the chat log, they did not get the job). Someone else is asking questions that sound like they came out of an incel forum. Another person asks the snarky, hostile AI assistant if they can microwave a metal fork<\/a> (for the record: no), but they continue to ask the AI increasingly absurd and trollish questions, eventually leading it to create a guide called \u201cHow to Use a Microwave Without Summoning Satan: A Beginner\u2019s Guide.\u201d<\/p>\n

ChatGPT does not make these conversations public by default. <\/p>\n

A conversation would be appended with a \u201c\/share\u201d URL only if the user deliberately clicks the \u201cshare\u201d button on their own chat and then clicks a second \u201ccreate link\u201d button. The service also declares that \u201cyour name, custom instructions, and any messages you add after sharing stay private.\u201d After clicking through to create a link, users can toggle whether or not they want that link to be discoverable.<\/p>\n

However, users may not anticipate that other search engines will index their shared ChatGPT links, potentially betraying personal information (my apologies to the person whose LinkedIn I discovered).<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Though unintentional, this is a norm that was established in part by Google. When people share public links to files from Google Drive, such as documents with the \u201cAnyone with link can view\u201d setting, Google may index them in Search. However, Google generally does not surface links to Drive documents that have not been publicly posted on the web \u2014 for example, a document may appear in search if it is linked on a trusted website.<\/p>\n

According to ChatGPT, these chats were indexed as part of an experiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cChatGPT chats are not public unless you choose to share them,\u201d an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch. \u201cWe\u2019ve been testing ways to make it easier to share helpful conversations, while keeping users in control, and we recently ended an experiment to have chats appear in search engine results if you explicitly opted in when sharing.\u201d<\/p>\n

While search engines like Google control the algorithms that determine what content gets surface for search terms, the search engines themselves cannot control what gets indexed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither Google nor any other search engine controls what pages are made public on the web,\u201d a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch. \u201cPublishers of these pages have full control over whether they are indexed by search engines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Updated, 7\/31\/25, 5:30 pm ET with comment and additional context from OpenAI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Update 7\/31\/25 4:10pm PT: Hours after this article was published, OpenAI said it removed the feature from ChatGPT…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":109661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[302,2722,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-109660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-chatgpt","9":"tag-google","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114952321252497392","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}