The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 didn’t so much cause a shift in the search landscape as trigger a series of seismic events. And, like seismologists, the SEO industry needs data if it’s to predict future tremors and aftershocks – let alone prepare itself for what the landscape might reshape itself into once the ground has finally settled.
So, when OpenAI released a 65-page research paper on Sept. 15, 2025, titled “How People Use ChatGPT,” some of us were understandably excited to finally have some authoritative usage data from inside a major large language model (LLM).
Two key findings leap out:
- We’re closer to mass adoption of AI than most probably realize.
- How users interact with ChatGPT has fundamentally shifted in the past year.
For SEOs, this isn’t just another adoption study: It’s strategic intelligence about where AI search is heading.