ChatGPT chats were indexed then removed from search but still remain online
61 comments
·August 3, 2025Sweepi
simonw
Here's the copy they used on that checkbox:
Make this chat discoverable
Allows it to be shown in web searches
What does "web search" mean? Is that about whether I should be able to search for my chats in the app in the future?
That language may seem obvious to those of us with a deep level of technical literacy - the denizens of Hacker News for example - but ChatGPT has over a billion users now.
Try asking the less technical people in your life to describe the difference between a web site and an app, or what a URL is, or get them to describe what "web search" means and name some products in that category. You may be unpleasantly surprised.
Meta AI gave people a "share" option with several levels of click though required to share a post and it was a fiasco: https://futurism.com/meta-ai-embarassing
ronsor
This is somewhat true, but we can't redefine every phrase from first principles whenever we use it. Web search has been a thing for decades now. People will simply have to learn things; we can't cater to an indefinite amount of ignorance.
jadamson
The word "public" is already used for this just about everywhere else.
simonw
When you have a billion users I would argue that you do need to cater to an indefinite amount of ignorance, where "ignorance" here means wildly varying levels of technical experience.
aniviacat
I'd like to add that the web search button in the ChatGPT interface is labled "Web search". And even when it starts searching on its own, it displays "searching the web...".
Eisenstein
Why is no one asking what purpose is served by indexing ChatGPT conversations? Why is this necessary? There is no option on your bank's website to 'make your finances discoverable' or your health insurance website to 'make your medical records discoverable'. It is not a matter of making it easier for people to understand what it is doing, it is a matter of thinking 'what could go wrong' and then determining if it is worth the risk to expose the option to do it.
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varispeed
ChatGPT is a website. "Web search" can literally mean that person will be able to find their chat through the search on the website and might assume it will not be available for everyone to see (because in their mind that would be too insane to be true).
You can also take into account people who are literate but are neurodivergent. This options was too ambiguous and should have contained more context explaining what "Web search" actually means. You would still get people misunderstanding it.
To me this looks like someone from marketing thought it would be cool to have conversations discoverable through search to "boost" awareness of the service, but in my opinion that is incredibly dumb and it is bizarre that nobody said "hang on a minute, isn't this stupid?" and it's gotten all the way to production.
karmakaze
Why are we 'lawyering' this instead of saying how they could/should improve it? All it needs is a small affordance: hover to get a clearer, longer description or something to that effect.
simonw
I think ditching the feature was the right move for them.
I'm not sure you could fix this with copy - we all know that users don't read anything.
The audience of people who genuinely do want their shared chats to also be indexed by Google is likely absolutely tiny. The audience of people who find such an option confusing and are likely to turn it on without understanding the consequences is proven to be pretty huge already.
deepsun
I agree in particular, but disagree in general. I prefer to live in the world when everything assumes people are just a little less ignorant than they really are. Kind of "aim higher". Otherwise everything becomes "aim lower", and we cannot have nice things.
I particular I agree OpenAI should have a better UX, but also I want to expect people to actually learn what a "URL" is if we want to live in the future. They might just go and learn.
johnfn
This is after a user has clicked "Share", read a modal that says "This chat may contain private information" and then clicked "Create link".
oxguy3
"Discoverable", I agree with you on; that should have been "public". And there probably should have been an "are you sure?" pop-up the first time you do this, explaining in a little bit more depth.
But "web searches" seems like a pretty straightforward term. Even if you think it means ChatGPT's built-in search, that would still imply that other ChatGPT users could find it. "Allow", I feel, is a pretty strong word that implies someone else is getting access (because why would I need to give myself permission for something?).
simonw
The other factor to consider here is that users may have been trained to click any checkbox that appears when they are trying to achieve a goal.
Here you have users trying to share something. A blank checkbox shows up, maybe that's something you have to check for the feature to work?
People generally don't read the labels on form elements, even if they're just a dozen words long.
justinsaccount
It says public. twice.
babyshake
Is the only/main use-case for this being that you are trying to do some type of SEO or marketing? Why else would you intentionally want your chats to shown in web searches?
It does seem like this UI should be updated with an extra confirmation step warning you that your chat will be public and this should be thought of as a permanent decision as anything made public on the web long enough to be indexed is public forever.
Kim_Bruning
If you publish something on the web, the traditional expectation is that it shows up in web searches.
knowsuchagency
Suggested alternative: “Public see chat. Public find chat. No privacy. All will see!”
grodriguez100
I don’t think “web searches” requires “a deep level of technical literacy”…
ronsor
The number one rule of software is that no matter how clear you make something, users will still screw up and blame you. Then other similarly ignorant people will agree with them.
simonw
... or people will agree with them who aren't "ignorant", but have spent enough time in the usability trenches to empathize with how they could have made that mistake.
gundmc
This rings true. I feel this way about the incognito "tracking" lawsuit as well.
aresant
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
UX 101 taught by George Carlin
simple10
DuckDuckGo still has a lot of the share links indexed.
The file upload ones are particularly interesting. Lots of financial and market analysis stuff like this one: https://chatgpt.com/share/68805b2d-0bf0-8007-b325-b06160356c... (no PII in the chat)
Looks like Google and Archive.org removed the share URLs.
_def
"inurl:https://chatgpt.com/share/" does not find any links on duckduckgo for me
afro88
The filter is actually "site:", but yes, no links indexed on DDG
simple10
Really? I'm still seeing results on DDG.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fchatgpt.com%2...
Maybe it's a region or cache issue while DDG is actively remove them?
Some random shares:
- https://chatgpt.com/share/67d0b32e-3ff0-800a-b1a9-b4a32e1ab9... (essay)
- https://chatgpt.com/share/67712739-53ac-8012-a151-d2dddcc40f... (dad jokes with math)
- https://chatgpt.com/share/678f887f-03f0-800d-ae17-a550ec758f... (health)
The ones above don't have PII, but I was also finding job application shares that had full CV PII. Yikes!
simple10
This is a pretty huge PII leak.
I was able to find a bunch of job application shares that had uploaded CVs with full PII. Names, phone #s, address etc. Yikes!
simple10
For non-PII shares, here's one that feels tailor made for HN.
Dad jokes with math:
https://chatgpt.com/share/67712739-53ac-8012-a151-d2dddcc40f...
ufko_org
What does this have to do with AI? If you're an idiot who can't read and doesn't understand that a shared chat will be publicly accessible, then nothing is going to help you.
quitit
Basically nothing: The angle being taken here seems to be that private or secret information was leaking out onto the web like a security flaw.
However that's clearly not the case as the user was already making the active choice of sharing those secrets or private information with another person. A person who: could copy or screenshot the information, or provide the link to another.
So the situation at hand is that the user was already willing to take on some risk to divulge that information.
This weighs against the arguments that "it's bad UX" and "maybe they don't understand what discoverable or web search means". - Both of which were already flimsy since "Discoverable" is basic comprehension, and we passed the bar for "web search" by knowing what ChatGPT is and how to use it.
There is a line where we need to allow the individual the freedom to have agency over their actions and the responsibility of the consequences of those actions.
busymom0
I think this is more of a UI/UX issue than AI issue.
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j45
Not sure why the links wouldn't be 404ing?
thephyber
Why would they?
This article applies to the subset of ChatGPT chats which were shared and opted into to make them visible to web crawlers. 404ing these chats would break the feature.
The problem is simply accurately messaging to the user who is opting to share it.
easton
Feels like they could just change the URL to the chat when you disable the discoverable thing. Guess that’d break links you explicitly shared, but who’s going and referencing someone else’s ChatGPT search so often they can’t take a updated link?
j45
When you turn off the sharing, the links should dissapear.
At least this is how sharing features seem to work in SaaS.
Feels like a possible bug.
_cs2017_
The article says that after the fix, the "discoverable" option sets nofollow/noindex. If so, how are discoverable chats different from non-discoverable now?
fardo
This feels like it should be a non-controversy.
Even being uncharitable, a big off-by-default checkbox saying “make this discoverable in web searches” is roughly as explicit as you can possibly make this feature textually, assuming your users will be applying any reading comprehension.
If they’re not, no further warnings were going to save them, so short of removing the feature or gating it behind increasingly elaborate “if only you knew better!” emails or pop-up modals they also presumably would not be reading, this was the likely outcome.
At some point, I don’t feel bad saying this is a user-side PEBKAC, and that more alerting would be a waste of time.
SoftTalker
Yet another example of why you should assume that anything you type into a web form will become public either deliberately or accidentally.
Not that I dislike criticizing OpenAI, but this seems to be a case of "your users are way dummer than you thought".
Like the button says "allow it to be shown in web searches". How can you misunderstand this?