ChatGPT vs Google Search

Users debate whether ChatGPT can replace or outperform Google Search for queries, praising its direct answers and follow-ups while criticizing hallucinations, lack of recency, and Google's declining quality.

📉 Falling 0.5x AI & Machine Learning
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Keywords

SEO AI SERP UX LLM HN SQL ycombinator.com wikipedia.org DDG chatgpt search google search engine google search gpt results engine bing search engines

Sample Comments

hanspeter Dec 2, 2022 View on HN

ChatGPT doesn't replace Google but it does multiple orders of magnitude better for questions that a lot of users rely on Google to answer.

acedTrex Mar 5, 2025 View on HN

Horrific take, google search is already bad enough. Defaulting to chatgpt style would make it useless. GPT is not a search engine.

ifyoubuildit Dec 12, 2023 View on HN

This actually has made me less happy with chatgpt.If I wanted to google something (or bing, whatever), I would have done that. A major draw for me has been that chatgpt was providing a much better experience than search engines.Now it sometimes feels like a fancy lmgtfy.

phailhaus Jan 6, 2023 View on HN

ChatGPT is a chatbot, not Google. It just produces answers that are plausible-sounding. ChatGPT is not doing any searches or data lookups for you in the background. Unfortunately, you may have learned total garbage.

BriggyDwiggs42 Apr 5, 2024 View on HN

Google search is terrible. Chatgpt is definitively better for searching right now, and i often find myself reaching for it over google for a wide category of questions.

f0e4c2f7 Nov 20, 2022 View on HN

Not a search engine but pretty often I will ask GPT-3 a question now if it's not easily googled. Often gives the initial context to Google follow up questions.

imtringued Feb 20, 2023 View on HN

I can't even augment ChatGPT with Google results, how can it be a replacement for Google?

collaborative Feb 17, 2023 View on HN

I have consistently been helped by ChatGPT every time Google has failed me. As a search engine it's really good. Only failing is re new data

Kurtz79 Dec 26, 2022 View on HN

The thing is, chatGPT seems to be already capable to perform Google's function reasonably well.If you ask for the top websites about [topic], it will output a shortlist of web links each with a description of the website.You can narrow down, ask for a specific number of links, ask to exclude videos or specific websites from the results...etc.If there was a chatGPT service with UI/speed/availability/up-to-date database of Google (a 2-months-old technology vs. a 25-yea

theoreticalmal Jan 15, 2025 View on HN

What on earth are people still searching for using search engines? I’ve found chatGPT to be significantly better at answering question I have than google or DDG or any other search engine. It’s still AI slop, but at least it’s a bit more succinct, and I can ask follow up questions