OpenAI confirmed it has disabled the feature in ChatGPT that made public conversations searchable on platforms like Google. The company described it as a brief test run, noting that it “created too many chances for users to unintentionally expose information they hadn’t meant to share.”
OpenAI’s Chief Information Security Officer, Dane Stuckey, announced in a post on X (previously known as Twitter) that the feature enabling public ChatGPT chats to appear in search engine results has been removed from the platform.
“We just removed a feature from @ChatGPTapp that allowed users to make their conversations discoverable by search engines, such as Google. This was a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations. This feature required users to opt in, first by picking a chat to share, then by clicking a checkbox for it to be shared with search engines (see below),” Stuckey wrote.
“Ultimately we think this feature introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn’t intend to, so we’re removing the option,” he added.
OpenAI is actively collaborating with Google:
Stuckey also mentioned that OpenAI is actively collaborating with search engines to take down any previously indexed content from the internet.
ChatGPT chats were appearing in Google search:
OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, previously offered a feature allowing users to share their conversations via a dedicated “share” button. By selecting the “create link” option, the platform would generate a unique URL (typically starting with chat.openai.com/share/…) that users could distribute.
However, many users were unaware that unless they disabled a specific setting, these shared conversations could be indexed by search engines like Google and Bing. As a result, anyone searching the right terms online could potentially come across these shared chats.
The text that appears when you hit Share clearly says “Anyone with the URL will be able to view your shared chat”, however what it also means, and what it doesn’t make entirely clear, is that Google can also now incorporate your chat into its search engine.
When you click the Share button, the message clearly states, “Anyone with the URL will be able to view your shared chat.” However, what’s not fully spelled out is that search engines like Google can also index that link—meaning your conversation could show up in search results.
