# How does ChatGPT search for local news? What happens between asking ChatGPT a local news question and getting an answer with sources. By Connor Lahey (Content Lead) and JP Garbaccio (Head of AEO/SEO). Source: Searchable research. An analysis of 30,000 prompts about 100 UK towns and cities across five AI assistants, collected on 9 and 10 September 2026. ## In three steps 1. ChatGPT first rewrites your question into a search of its own. The search it sends is shorter than what you typed, keeps the name of the town and often carries the date, so a question about "today" is searched with the exact day. 2. It then turns that one question into several searches, 3.2 per answer on average. The first searches are broad, and later ones narrow down to specific websites, such as a council's own site, by using the site: operator to search inside them. 3. Those searches bring back pages from 12.3 websites per answer on average, and ChatGPT cites 4 of those websites in its reply. The other pages come back in the same searches but are not linked in the answer. --- ## Step 1: ChatGPT rewrites your question before it searches Ask ChatGPT for today's top news stories in Grimsby and the search it sends to the web reads `Grimsby Lincolnshire news today September 9 2026`. None of the 3,002 answers' searches repeated the question word for word. The rewrite is shorter, 7.8 words on average against 11 in the question, and it turns relative time into a date: 296 of 300 questions about "today" or "right now" were searched with the exact day. The town name stays in 98.4% of searches, while "UK", which every question included, stays in 153 of 9,700. ChatGPT also adds what it already knows. Asked what was in the local paper in Rotherham, all three answers searched for the Rotherham Advertiser by name. Share of ChatGPT searches containing each part of a local news question: | Part of the question | Share of searches | Searches | |---|---|---| | Town or city name | 98.4% | 9,544 of 9,700 | | The year (2026) | 94.5% | 9,167 of 9,700 | | The month (September) | 75.8% | 7,356 of 9,700 | | County | 55.1% | 3,683 of 6,687 | | The word "news" | 45.6% | 4,426 of 9,700 | | A quoted phrase | 27.1% | 2,630 of 9,700 | | The word "today" | 6.1% | 590 of 9,700 | | "UK" | 1.6% | 153 of 9,700 | County share is of the searches whose question named a county. --- ## Step 2: One question becomes several searches that narrow to specific websites Google calls this query fan-out. It introduced the term with AI Mode in March 2025 to describe one question being split into several related searches whose results are combined into a single answer. ChatGPT ran 3.2 searches per answer. The first round is broad: 2,993 of the 3,002 answers opened without naming a website. Later rounds narrow, using the site: operator to search inside one website. In the second round 70.2% of searches used site:, against 11.8% in the first. How far it fans out depends on the question. Planning applications drew 9.5 searches per answer and council decisions 5.6. "Where can I read local news" drew 1.3, and none of those answers searched inside a named website. The deepest answer, about planning in Sheffield, ran 35 searches over eight rounds and went as far as searching for a named road, Orgreave Lane, and individual application numbers such as `26/02534/FUL`. Searches per ChatGPT answer, by question asked (about 150 answers per question): | Question | Searches per answer | Answers searching inside a named website | |---|---|---| | Planning applications | 9.5 | 93% | | Council decisions | 5.6 | 88% | | Local news to know about | 3.9 | 40% | | Catch me up on the news | 3.7 | 29% | | This week's headlines | 3.7 | 28% | | Top news stories today | 3.6 | 33% | | Events this weekend | 3.5 | 39% | | What's in the local paper | 3.2 | 65% | | Summarise the local news | 3.2 | 26% | | Housing and new homes | 3.2 | 35% | | What people are talking about | 3.0 | 17% | | Police incidents | 2.7 | 52% | | What's happening this week | 2.6 | 21% | | Local sport news | 2.6 | 19% | | Road closures and roadworks | 2.4 | 53% | | Biggest news story right now | 2.3 | 7% | | Breaking news | 1.8 | 1% | | Who reports local news | 1.5 | 0% | | Crime reported recently | 1.4 | 7% | | Where to read local news | 1.3 | 0% | --- ## Step 3: The searches return a pool of pages and ChatGPT cites a few of them Each search brings back pages, and together they form the pool ChatGPT answers from. The searches returned pages from 12.3 websites per answer, and ChatGPT cited 4 of those websites in the text of its reply. A question about recent decisions by Doncaster Council shows the whole path. ChatGPT opened with a broad search and a site: search on doncaster.gov.uk, then ran two more site: searches on the council's website: 1. Round 1: `Doncaster Council recent decisions September 2026 cabinet council South Yorkshire` 2. Round 1: `site:doncaster.gov.uk council decisions Doncaster cabinet September 2026` 3. Round 2: `site:doncaster.gov.uk "2026" "Cabinet" "resolved" Doncaster June July August 2026 council` 4. Round 2: `site:doncaster.gov.uk/news 2026 Doncaster Council decision cabinet August 2026` Those four searches returned 25 pages from 8 websites. Six of the 8 citations went to doncaster.gov.uk, one to the council's meeting records and one to opencouncil.network, which republishes council data. The Guardian, The Times and six Wikipedia pages came back in the same searches, and none of them was cited. | Website | Pages returned | Pages cited | |---|---|---| | doncaster.gov.uk | 12 | 6 | | en.wikipedia.org | 6 | 0 | | youtube.com | 2 | 0 | | doncaster.moderngov.co.uk | 1 | 1 | | opencouncil.network | 1 | 1 | | theguardian.com | 1 | 0 | | thetimes.com | 1 | 0 | | facebook.com | 1 | 0 | A site: search can only return what ChatGPT's search is allowed to reach. OpenAI says sites that block its OAI-SearchBot crawler "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers", however precisely ChatGPT searches for them. --- ## Methodology - This analysis used 30,000 prompts to ask 20 unique questions about 100 UK towns and cities to five AI assistants: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews, on 9 and 10 September 2026. - It resulted in 244,725 citations across the five assistants. The citations were categorised by type of source, and just over 10,000 unique websites were found to influence answers about local news queries. - The search behaviour on this page comes from 3,002 ChatGPT answers about UK towns, for which Searchable recorded the 9,700 searches ChatGPT ran and the sources it returned. - "Pages returned" is the full list of sources ChatGPT showed for an answer. "Cited" means the page was linked in the text of the reply. - Sources: [Expanding AI Overviews and introducing AI Mode](https://blog.google/products/search/ai-mode-search/) (Google, 5 March 2025) and [Overview of OpenAI Crawlers](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots) (OpenAI). --- [Start for free](https://app.searchable.com/signup) | [Book a demo](/contact-sales)