Research with ChatGPT
Use search and deep research to find, analyze, and synthesize information from across the web.
ChatGPT can be a helpful research partner because it quickly brings together information from many sources, making it easier to explore ideas, spot patterns, and understand complex topics. By reasoning through context, citing sources, and producing clear, structured summaries, it helps turn open questions into well-defined insights.
There are two different ways to search the public internet with ChatGPT—search and deep research. Below is an explanation of both, and when to use each.
ChatGPT search allows ChatGPT to pull in the latest information from the internet directly into your conversations. This means you can go beyond ChatGPT’s built-in training knowledge and get up-to-date answers on things like current events, market trends, competitor activity, or niche details not included in its training data.
Instead of toggling between multiple browser tabs and summarizing information yourself, search brings those updates directly into ChatGPT, streamlining your research and saving you time. It also makes it easy to combine fresh web data with the reasoning and summarization power of ChatGPT models.
Open a new chat in ChatGPT.
Ask a question that requires current or detailed information (e.g., “What are the top three AI trends in healthcare in 2025?”), or click Web Search from your tools menu.
Look for the small globe icon 🌐 next to the model’s response—this indicates that search was used.
Click the citation links in the response to review the original sources.
Follow-up with clarifying prompts, like “Summarize this in 3 bullet points for executives” or “Turn this into a customer-facing email draft.”
Citations: Always review linked sources before making decisions, since search results reflect what’s available on the web.
Scope: Search won’t replace specialized databases (e.g., subscription research tools or proprietary data).
Admin settings: In enterprise environments, Workspace Owners may choose to enable or disable search.
Deep research in ChatGPT uses reasoning to quickly gather, summarize, and interpret extensive information from across the web, helping you answer complex questions more thoroughly than a standard web search.
Every output is designed to be documented, with clear citations to sources, making it easy to verify and reference the information. Deep research is also particularly effective at finding niche, non-intuitive information that would otherwise require reviewing many sources.
Unlike a traditional web search, deep research is agentic, meaning that it actively plans and carries out a multi-step research process—searching, evaluating sources, refining queries, and synthesizing findings—rather than simply returning a list of links.
1. Open ChatGPT and select deep research from your tools menu
2. Ask a clear and detailed prompt. Include your topic, goal, timeframe, and key details. If deep research needs more context, it will automatically ask follow up questions.
I’m researching [topic] for [audience/decision/meeting]. Provide a report including recent key opportunities and risks, and 3-5 actionable insights.
3. Review your report
Deep research may run for 5–30 minutes while it explores the web. You’ll get a notification when your report is ready.
Ask follow-up questions or request further analysis, and deep research will refine the output as needed.
These features sound similar, but are best for different use cases. Below is a quick comparison of the two features:
搜索 | 深度研究 | |
|---|---|---|
用途 | 从网络或已连接的信息源快速检索具体事实、文档或最新信息。 | 针对需要结合多个信息源进行推理和综合分析的复杂或模糊问题，开展多步骤的深入分析。 |
典型使用场景 | 查找近期的新闻稿、产品规格表、新闻报道或单个数据点（例如：“去年夏季奥运会的现场观众人数是多少？”）。 | 探索更广泛的问题，例如“哪些因素会影响大型国际体育赛事的现场观众人数？”或“不同国家如何筹备奥运会？” |
输出深度 | 返回简洁的结果、直接的答案或链接，类似于智能网络搜索。 | 生成有证据支持的长篇综述，通常包含引用来源、利弊权衡和推理步骤。 |
速度 | 快，通常只需几秒钟。 | 较慢，由于涉及多步骤推理，可能需要几分钟或更长时间。 |
信息时效性 | 优先获取最新可用信息，适合查找突发新闻或时效性强的数据。 | 在相关时使用最新资料，但更注重结合背景理解信息，而不只是追求时效性。 |
问题复杂度 | 最适合明确、具体的查询。 | 最适合没有唯一正确答案的开放式、探索性或战略性问题。 |
