ChatGPT doesn't fetch partner pages live. Instead, it receives them as pre-generated summaries, while regular web pages arrive as raw text snippets. In the prompt, partner entries are placed ahead of all web results. For ranked lists, the summaries name 70 percent of entries in positions 1 through 3 but only 23 percent of those in positions 7 through 10, according to 1,000 cases Konitzny analyzed.
OpenAI had promised partners more prominent placement in ChatGPT back in 2024, and a study from Hamburg later found Springer media appearing far more often in the web interface than through the API. But even partners don't always get cited correctly.
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