Does ChatGPT Use Bing? What That Means for Your Store

ByTyler Ziton

Yes, ChatGPT uses Bing, but only for a small share of its searches in 2026. OpenAI still names Bing as the search engine for its Enterprise and Edu workspaces. For everyone else, a July 2026 study found the results coming from OpenAI’s own index and from Google. So Bing is a ten-minute setup for your store, not a strategy.

Short answer: ChatGPT still uses Bing in places, but your store reaches most ChatGPT users through OpenAI’s crawler and Google’s index. Set up Bing once for Copilot and move on.

How Does ChatGPT Use Bing in 2026?

ChatGPT uses Bing in 2026 mainly for business workspaces. OpenAI’s help page for Enterprise and Edu says ChatGPT “may share disassociated search queries with the Bing search engine to return web results.”

The page for regular accounts is vaguer. OpenAI’s ChatGPT search article says it “sometimes partners with other search providers” and links to Microsoft’s privacy statement, but it never names Bing.

So what do regular accounts run on? RESONEO captured 1,249 ChatGPT answers in July 2026, back when each result carried a label for the pipeline that fetched it.

AccountMain sourceBing results seen
Free, instant answersOpenAI’s own index, 63.6%None
Paid, thinking modeScraped Google, 74.6%None
Team workspace (one June test)Bing, 93.7%Nearly all

The Team row comes from a single workspace, so read it as a hint and not a rule. It does line up with OpenAI’s own wording, which only names Bing for business plans.

OpenAI removed those labels on July 21, so nobody outside the company can measure the mix today. What the snapshot shows is that Bing went from the backbone to a side door. That shift is also why you don’t need to rank in Google to show up in ChatGPT, but you do need to be in Google’s index.

Why Did Everyone Say ChatGPT Runs on Bing?

Everyone said ChatGPT runs on Bing since it was true at launch, and the data backed it up. Seer Interactive found 87% of ChatGPT search citations matched Bing’s top 20 results in February 2025, against 56% for Google.

The link between the two companies goes back further. Microsoft rebuilt Bing around OpenAI’s models in February 2023, and the first version of ChatGPT’s web feature was called “Browse with Bing.”

Then the picture changed in about a year:

  • July 2025: testers published pages only Google could see, and ChatGPT cited them anyway.
  • August 2025: Ahrefs found only 8.1% of ChatGPT citations ranked in Bing’s top 10.
  • July 2026: RESONEO found no Bing results on its free or paid test accounts.

None of that means the old advice was wrong when it was given. OpenAI was building its own search index the whole time, and it switched the main supply once that index and its Google sources were good enough. The tip just outlived the setup it described.

Most SEOs still repeat the 2024 advice, and plenty of posts ranking for this question do too. If someone tells you to “optimize for Bing to rank in ChatGPT,” check the date on what they are quoting. The current signals are in the 7 steps I use to rank on ChatGPT.

Is Bing Still Worth Setting Up for a Store?

Yes, Bing is still worth setting up for a store, since it takes about ten minutes and reaches three audiences. Statcounter put Bing at 5.29% of global search in September 2026, the second-largest engine, and Bing’s index also feeds Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT’s business workspaces.

Copilot is the part store owners overlook. It ships inside Windows and Edge, so people at work who never picked a search engine get Bing-powered answers by default.

Think about who that is for your store. It is an office manager ordering supplies, a buyer comparing two vendors on a work laptop, or a gift shopper on a lunch break. They ask Copilot the same question a ChatGPT user would, and the answer is built from Bing’s index.

The setup is a short checklist:

  1. Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and import your store from Google Search Console.
  2. Submit the sitemap Shopify already generates at yourstore.com/sitemap.xml.
  3. Spot-check that your top collections and products are indexed.
  4. Open the AI Performance report once a month.

That last report is the reason I would do this even with zero Bing traffic. Microsoft’s AI Performance report shows how often your pages get cited in Copilot and the phrases the AI used to find them. Google gives you nothing at that level.

Do the Bing basics once, then let your Google work rank you twice. To see what comes back, watch referrals from copilot.microsoft.com and bing.com next to chatgpt.com, which is part of tracking AI traffic in GA4.

Does IndexNow Help You Show Up in ChatGPT?

No, IndexNow does not help you show up in ChatGPT directly. IndexNow lists Bing, Naver, Seznam, Yandex, and Yep as the engines that receive its pings, and OpenAI is not one of them.

It still earns its toggle. IndexNow tells Bing the moment a URL is added, changed, or removed, which keeps Copilot’s picture of your prices and stock current. Most Shopify SEO apps turn it on with one switch.

For ChatGPT, speed comes from OAI-SearchBot visiting your store and from Google indexing your pages. I go through those timelines in how fast ChatGPT and AI Overviews pick up new content.

What Should Your Store Do About ChatGPT and Bing?

Your store should spend ten minutes on Bing and the rest of its effort on OpenAI’s crawler and Google’s index. Those two supplied nearly every result in the 2026 data, and both are things you can check today.

Your products have one more route that skips search engines entirely. OpenAI’s search help page lists Shopify next to Microsoft among its providers, and ChatGPT’s product cards are built from merchant feeds. So on Shopify, clean product data reaches ChatGPT even on days when no search engine is involved.

For your pages, start with robots.txt. If OAI-SearchBot is blocked, OpenAI says your pages will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and no Bing ranking fixes that. Then confirm your money pages are indexed in Google Search Console.

If you only have an hour, split it this way: ten minutes on the Bing checklist above, twenty on robots.txt and your firewall, and thirty in Search Console fixing whatever is not indexed. That order follows where ChatGPT’s results came from in the data.

A separate Bing strategy is a solution looking for a problem. The same clear titles, direct answers, and fast pages that rank you in Google rank you in Bing. If you want all three checked and fixed in one pass, that is what my AI search services cover.

Want to Know Which Door ChatGPT Uses for Your Store?

ChatGPT leans on Bing far less than it did at launch, so the stores that win there are the ones its own crawler can read and Google has indexed. If you are not sure where you stand, book a call and I’ll check your crawler access, your Google and Bing index coverage, and your AI referral rows with you. For the ongoing work, see my AI search services for Shopify stores.

Sources

SEO Consultant

Tyler Ziton is an SEO consultant and founder of Ziton Digital. He has driven $21M in annual organic revenue for 30+ brands including Park Seed, Flexfire, and Fieldsheer, and builds organic revenue systems for Shopify stores using SEO, AI search, and CRO.

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