On September 26 we handed OpenAI's current model six ordinary SEO jobs through the API, then checked each answer against real data. Two results tell most of the story. The model produced a tidy title tag for Trello's pricing page and got all four plan prices right. Then, with web search switched on, it named Fit Small Business, TechnologyAdvice and Salesforce as Google's top three for "best crm for small business".
What actually held Google's top three organic spots that day was Zoho, a Reddit thread and Slack. None of ChatGPT's picks made page one.
So can you use ChatGPT for SEO? You can, once you know which jobs to give it. We sort them into word jobs and number jobs. The word jobs we tried, such as rewriting, meta tags and schema, all went fine. The number jobs, search volumes and rankings, looked convincing and were wrong. Here's how each test went.
Can ChatGPT do keyword research?
It's fine for brainstorming, but you can't use it to measure anything. We had it estimate monthly US search volume for ten common B2B keywords, once with web search off and once with it on, and compared its answers with Google Ads data.
| Keyword | Google Ads | ChatGPT, no search | ChatGPT, with search |
|---|---|---|---|
| email marketing software | 90,500 | 12,100 | 6,600 |
| project management software | 165,000 | 33,100 | 74,000 |
| invoice software | 5,400 | 9,900 | 27,100 |
| password manager for teams | 480 | 1,600 | 590 |
| time tracking app | 5,400 | 14,800 | 5,400 |
Across all ten keywords, ChatGPT was off by about 91% on average with search off and 71% with it on. With search off, none of its guesses got within 20% of the Google number. Turning search on pulled three into that range, but it also broke one badly: invoice software jumped from 83% too high to five times the true figure.
What worries me more is how the wrong numbers look. Google Ads reports volume in rounded buckets, and 6,600 and 33,100 are two of them, so ChatGPT's guesses arrive in exactly the format of real data. Once they're in your spreadsheet, you can't tell them apart. Let ChatGPT grow a seed list if you like, then take the actual volumes from an SEO tool or Google's Keyword Planner.
Can ChatGPT tell you who ranks on Google?
Whether search was on decided this one. With web search off, the model did well. It told us live rankings were beyond it, named a few sites with a history of ranking for the query, and never said any of them was in first place.
With search on, its language changed to "the top 3 organic results I'm seeing", and it listed three URLs plus a caveat about personalization. We pulled Google's live US results the same day. The page opened with an AI Overview, followed by Zoho, a Reddit thread and Slack, with Forbes, monday.com and the US Chamber of Commerce lower down. ChatGPT's three sites weren't anywhere on page one.
So it behaved more carefully with less information, which is backwards from what you'd hope. Don't trust a chatbot's ranking claim until you've checked the position yourself in Search Console or a rank tracker.
Can ChatGPT write title tags and meta descriptions?
Yes, and this test went cleanly. The title it wrote for Trello's pricing page came in at 52 characters. Its meta description landed between 150 and 160 characters. We then had it add the prices, with web search on, and all four checked out against the live page:
| Trello plan | Price ChatGPT gave, per user per month, billed annually |
|---|---|
| Free | $0 |
| Standard | $5 |
| Premium | $10 |
| Enterprise | $17.50 |
Trello's pricing page is well known and rarely changes, though. If your prices moved last month, or few sites ever write about your page, the odds of a wrong number go up, so paste today's facts into the prompt instead of asking the model to look them up.
How often does ChatGPT mention your brand?
Most founders have no idea. The answer might surprise you.
Can ChatGPT write schema markup?
Mechanically it did a first-rate job. We supplied three questions with their answers and requested FAQ schema. What came back was valid JSON-LD with the correct FAQPage, Question and acceptedAnswer structure, wrapped in a script tag, and it kept our answer text word for word.
The problem here isn't ChatGPT's fault. Since August 2023, Google has limited FAQ rich results to "well-known, authoritative government and health websites," so on most sites that markup won't earn the expandable snippet it once did. The markup still tells machines what your page is about, and our structured data guide goes through the types that still repay the effort.
Can ChatGPT come up with blog topics?
Sure, but you'll get the same generic list as everyone else. Our request was ten blog topics for a B2B payroll software company. Back came titles like "How to Choose the Right Payroll Software for Your Business" and "The Future of Payroll: Trends Businesses Should Watch." Not one topic on the list named an integration, a state or a company size.
We checked demand for three of the ideas:
| Topic idea | US searches a month |
|---|---|
| "How to choose payroll software" | About 30 |
| "payroll compliance" | About 210 |
| "payroll automation" | About 480 |
On top of the thin demand, any competitor who asks ChatGPT the same question walks away with the same list. Good topic ideas come from what buyers are asking, and finding what buyers ask AI before you write shows how to get at that.
Can ChatGPT edit and rewrite content?
Editing is where ChatGPT pays for itself. We handed over a 150-word paragraph on picking payroll software to tighten, and got back 51 words with every fact intact, down to the integrations and the multi-state tax point.
The lowest-risk SEO job you can give ChatGPT is reworking text you already trust, whether that means rewriting, tightening or restructuring it, since you can compare each sentence with your original. Turning your notes into an outline or an early draft works the same way.
How to prompt ChatGPT for the word jobs
All the clean results we got had one thing in common: we brought the facts, and ChatGPT only supplied the words. Whenever it had to go find the facts on its own, it drifted. So paste your source material into the prompt and spell out the limits.
Here's what that looks like for a title tag plus meta description:
Write a title tag (max 60 characters) and a meta description
(150-160 characters) for this page. Use only the facts below.
Don't add features, prices or claims that aren't listed.
Page: Pricing for [product]
Facts: Free plan $0. Standard $5 per user per month billed yearly.
Audience: teams of 5 to 50 comparing project tools.
For a rewrite, say what has to survive:
Cut this paragraph to about 60 words. Keep every product name,
number and requirement. Don't add new claims.
[paste paragraph]
Before anything ships, count the characters and check every fact against your source. For schema, paste in your real questions and answers, ask for JSON-LD, and run whatever comes back through Google's Rich Results Test.
15 hours a week manually. Or 15 minutes with RankControl.
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Will Google penalize content written with ChatGPT?
Not because ChatGPT wrote it. Google's 2023 guidance says "appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines." Its spam policies draw the line at pages mass-produced "for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings" with little value for users, and they call that scaled content abuse.
The ranking data agrees. In 2025 Ahrefs measured how AI content share lined up with ranking position across its dataset, and the correlation was 0.011, effectively nothing. Google doesn't appear to be spotting AI text and demoting it. Semrush ran its own study in April 2026. In it, purely AI-generated posts held the number one spot only 9% of the time, compared with 80% for posts written by people. Put the two findings side by side and the more likely culprit is thin content, which raw AI output tends to produce.
You can see this in a recent r/SEO thread. A site owner who uses AI to edit their content saw rankings slide by about 70% and blamed the AI. The replies that went deepest suspected other things, like pages changing identity because a rewrite and a redesign landed together, or content that no longer rendered without JavaScript.
chatgpt content hurts seo?
I use ai for improving my content all the time, and I revamped my site to be way better, i added advanced calculators, improved design, keep most of the original content and my rankings dropped like 70 % even though google said they will no...
For the full story of Google's stance, see whether Google targets AI content or low-quality content, which covers the history of the policy.
Where ChatGPT fits in an SEO workflow
Here's how all six tests scored:
| Task | Result | Use instead |
|---|---|---|
| Search volumes | Wrong, in a believable format | Keyword Planner or an SEO tool |
| Who ranks on Google | Wrong with search on | Search Console or a rank tracker |
| Title tags and meta descriptions | Accurate on a stable page | Check facts on pages that changed |
| FAQ schema | Valid markup | Fine as is |
| Blog topic ideas | Generic, with thin demand | Buyer questions and real volume data |
| Rewriting for clarity | Strong | Fine as is |
ChatGPT also makes up sources when you ask it for them, which we tested on its own in can you use ChatGPT to generate citations. Ask the same question on X and you'll mostly find "reply for my free ChatGPT SEO prompts" giveaways, so Reddit is where the practitioners are having the real conversation.
You can run the split on your own, with ChatGPT on the word jobs and proper tools on the number jobs, plus an hour a month in Search Console checking your pages.
Or you can hand both kinds of job to RankControl. The content engine builds its article plans from real search data and buyer questions. It writes every article against the pages that already rank for its keyword and scores the draft for how easily AI engines can quote it, with a fix list attached. AI visibility tracking then runs up to 50 buyer questions each week across seven engines, ChatGPT included.
For a quick baseline first, run a free check of your brand in AI answers.
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