Where do the popular LLMs find their information?
See the differences in how popular LLMs find their content.
MarTechCharts regularly highlights data of interest to marketers and marketing operations professionals.
Popular LLMs like Google Gemini and ChatGPT have to get their information from somewhere. There’s a vast amount of information available online, and each LLM uses its own methods to find what it needs to answer the questions user asks in a prompt.
In some ways, LLMs are a lot like traditional search engines. They index websites and then rank the information they find. But the LLMs present the information as an answer, instead of as a list of pages where one can find the answer.
ChatGPT and Gemini rely on different indexing strategies, and therefore, build their knowledge based on different websites.
Google Gemini Pro 1.5 indexes more heavily on Reddit, YouTube and Amazon, according to the study conducted by Semrush (Semrush is the parent company of Third Door Media, the publisher of MarTech.)
ChatGPT 4o relies more heavily on Google, the Semrush study found. That means that, while there is an emerging field of generative engine optimization (GEO) or answer engine optimization (AEO), good old search engine optimization (SEO) still holds a place in the ChatGPT index, because it is central to getting content ranked on Google.
MarTech is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
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