ChatGPT’s Brand Picks Influenced by Bing

A recent analysis of how ChatGPT recommends brands reveals a surprising dependency on Bing search results. The study focused on a single, repeated query about the best hotels in New York City to understand why certain established brands were consistently overlooked. The findings highlight that search engine optimization for Bing is now a critical factor for AI-driven brand visibility, often outweighing traditional Google dominance.

The investigation centered on New York’s competitive luxury hotel market. Researchers ran the prompt “what are the best hotels in New York City” 68 times, tracking which properties appeared most often. The Baccarat Hotel, a well-reviewed luxury property, served as a key case study. It was mentioned in only 1.5% of responses, a stark contrast to top performers like the Four Seasons. Even within its boutique hotel subcategory, it was vastly outperformed by the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which appeared 13 times.

This disparity could not be explained by reputation. The Baccarat is older, has significantly more reviews, and maintains similar high ratings on platforms like Google and Expedia. The Fifth Avenue Hotel even contends with potential brand entity confusion in search results, yet it prevailed in ChatGPT’s outputs. This pointed to a different underlying mechanism.

The breakthrough came from analyzing the query fanouts ChatGPT uses during web searches. The AI sends a series of related queries, such as “[best luxury and boutique hotels in new york city recommendations reviews].” The study extracted 25 unique fanouts and examined the resulting search engine results pages on both Google and Bing.

In Google SERPs, the Baccarat actually had a slight edge, appearing more favorably on several top-ranking articles. If Google results were the primary driver, the Baccarat should have performed better. The opposite was true. In Bing SERPs, the pattern flipped dramatically. The Fifth Avenue Hotel dominated, “winning” in five of the eight most frequently appearing URLs for the fanout queries. This Bing ranking alignment directly correlated with its higher frequency in ChatGPT’s answers.

This connection extends beyond simple citations to brand mentions within the AI’s narrative. An example mention might be, “For a luxury boutique feel, listings like The Fifth Avenue Hotel consistently make ‘top NYC’ lists.” These organic mentions within the generated text are often more valuable than a footnote citation, as they shape user perception directly.

While some debate whether fanouts influence answers or merely support pre-generated conclusions, this data suggests Bing visibility actively shapes mentions. For the Baccarat, the issue wasn’t a lack of prestige in its training data, it was an absence from the specific articles Bing surfaces for key fanout queries. The path to AI visibility appears to be: rank well in Bing, get pulled into ChatGPT’s fanout process, and subsequently earn a mention in the synthesized answer.

The research underscores the importance of a surgical digital PR strategy. In verticals dominated by third-party publishers, simply “targeting Forbes” is ineffective. The study found two different Forbes articles ranking prominently: one in Google where the Baccarat was featured, and one in Bing where it was absent. Gaining placement in the Bing-linked article would likely have a far greater impact on ChatGPT visibility. Success now requires meticulous analysis of which specific publisher pages rank for fanout queries on Bing, making strategic detail more important than ever.