ChatGPT's Web Cache: OpenAI Stores Indexed Web Content

OpenAI's ChatGPT web search feature includes a web cache. This means it stores offline, locally saved versions of web pages it has previously crawled. What's interesting is that this isn't a new concept; all search engines use cached versions of web pages. Amy Rigby highlighted this on LinkedIn, noting that SEO and AEO professionals have speculated about OpenAI building a "hidden cached index" of web pages. An OpenAI help document confirms this, stating that "Offline web search" allows ChatGPT to use OpenAI’s indexed and cached web content. This happens instead of performing a live web search for every request. If a page isn't in this index or cache, ChatGPT cannot retrieve it through offline web search. The bottom line is that ChatGPT can access information from pages already available in OpenAI's system, which impacts how and when information is retrieved.