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OpenAI ChatGPT AI Search Updates — March 2026

On March 5-6, ChatGPT stopped exposing query fanouts in its responses — the "Searching N queries" indicator disappeared. This chart shows 60 days of fanout data leading up to that change, capturing the moment ChatGPT went dark on its web search behavior. Based on data tracked by Promptwatch.

Average Fanouts Per Response — Jan 5 to Mar 6

The average number of web search queries ChatGPT generated per response from Jan 5 to Mar 6. On March 5–6, fanouts dropped to zero — ChatGPT stopped exposing its query fanouts in responses.

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How we collect this data

We collect millions of prompt responses, citations, and click data from the actual user interfaces of major AI platforms — over 1 billion data points and growing. This gives us one of the largest and most authentic datasets on how AI search engines cite sources and recommend brands.

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We collect data from the interfaces of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, AI Overviews, and more — the same results hundreds of millions of users see daily.

1B+ data points

Our dataset spans over 1 billion analyzed citations, prompts, and responses — giving us one of the largest AI search datasets available.

Aggregated & public

We publish these reports freely so the GEO and AI search community can learn from the data. All reports are based on aggregated, non-identifiable trends.

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