ChatGPT RAG Searches Suspected of Inflating Brand site: Impressions in GSC
lilyraynyc · x · 2026-08-13
SEO expert Lily Ray noticed an anomaly: major brands are seeing thousands of impressions but nearly zero clicks for site: queries in Google Search Console (GSC), with numbers trending upwards.
She speculates this could be caused by ChatGPT and other LLMs heavily utilizing Google's site: search operator for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). If these background AI retrieval actions are being logged in GSC, it not only pollutes traditional SEO metrics but also indicates how aggressively AI assistants are scraping the web.
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