ChatGPT search-on vs search-off returns opposite citations for the same query. I'm tracking both now.

Spent a week trying to understand why my citation rates were so inconsistent across runs on the same query. Figured out it wasn't temperature variance — it was search mode.

When ChatGPT has web search enabled, it behaves like a fresh-crawl retrieval system. My recent content (comparison pages published 3 weeks ago) shows up. When search is off, it's pure training data, and my brand is either not there or gets confused with older competitors.

So now I have two separate tracking columns:

• 'ChatGPT search-on' mention rate
• 'ChatGPT search-off' mention rate

They're completely different numbers. Search-on: I'm at 31% mention rate on buyer-intent queries. Search-off: 7%.

The gap is actually useful information. The 24-point spread tells me that my content is being crawled and read recently, but I haven't built enough training-corpus presence yet for the baseline model to know I exist.

Search-on is the leading indicator. If search-on moves, search-off should follow in 3-6 months as the new content gets ingested.

If you're only tracking ChatGPT and getting confused by variance — check whether your test runs have search enabled or not. It's probably not variance, it's two different data sources answering the same prompt.