ChatGPT just launched several new features that are great improvements to its search functionality. Let’s look into each feature and what they may mean for the visibility of your organization as well as user adoption.

Overall, it seems that the generative AI platforms like ChatGPT continue to move closer to traditional search, while traditional search moves closer to ChatGPT. For example, Google introduced autocomplete in 2004, now ChatGPT is releasing it in 2025….that’s 25 years later!

Improved Shopping

There are new shopping features rolling out that look very similar to product carousels that already exist in traditional search and social platforms. While you could use ChatGPT for shopping already, the interface was not great in comparison to traditional search and social platforms.

There are some interesting components of this new functionality, including:

  • It leverages a very similar look and feel to shopping carousels that people are already used to from search and social platforms. This will likely increase adoption as there will be less friction than if this was a completely new interface.
  • Some publishers that are cited as a source of information are included because they were part of a licensing deal that was signed directly with OpenAI.
  • ChatGPT has infinite memory (only Pro users for now). When infinite memory rolls out for everyone (including free users) and integrates that with shopping, the results are going to get hyper personalized. This makes it critical for e-commerce businesses to make sure they have detailed and well-optimized product landing pages.
  • The shopping results showcase product attributes like prices and star ratings. This is likely to come from structured data markup. It’s been unclear if generative AI platforms explicitly use structured data markup, but things may be heading that way quickly.

Improved Citations

They are continuing to increase the usage of citations and links within responses. This is great news for organizations that have leveraged a content strategy focused on capturing search traffic. There are 2 specific changes they are making with citations:

  1. Multiple in-line citations can be used for a given response
  2. The citations will highlight the portion of the response that they relate to

These changes will make it more likely that websites with content referenced in generative AI responses will receive traffic from users that want to dive deeper into the cited material. It will likely also help increase the feeling of trust people place in the AI response.

Trending and Autocomplete

These features have been around forever in search. However, making ChatGPT feel more like search is a great way to increase adoption as people will love the feeling of familiarity. Big changes in user interfaces are a key point of friction that stops people from adopting a new platform or technology. Making ChatGPT feel familiar is a great idea to help increase adoption.

Conclusion

While it feels like we’re revisiting the early days of search with ChatGPT releasing features that Google has used for years, I believe this is a pivotal moment. These changes will remove friction and make it more likely that people will try ChatGPT and come back to it. While usage is still small compared to Google, it’s growing at an exponential rate.

These features continue to make it critical to focus on how you can increase your visibility within generative AI platforms, and increased shopping and citation links are clear signs that there will be opportunities to capture traffic from these results.

If you need help with improving your visibility in generative AI results, reach out to info@morevisibility.com.