OpenAI is trying really hard to make ChatGPT Search into a viable product. It's available for free, to all users, without limits. And now, just like with Google Search, it can be used without logging into an account. But even with all it AI features, Google Search still focuses on giving you links to pages directly, while ChatGPT Search instead uses online sources to give you an answer, backed up by links. You can click the links in your answer's sources to open a website (and you really should check ChatGPT's homework, as it tends to hallucinate quite a bit), but the question remains: is ChatGPT Search worth making your default search engine, and is that even possible? What is ChatGPT Search? Credit: Khamosh Pathak ChatGPT Search is OpenAI's attempt at integrating something akin to an internet search engine into its AI products. You access it through the same page as regular ChatGPT clicking the "Search" button before pressing "Enter" will turn your question into a search instead. OpenAI will then pipe the knowledge from its internet search, gathering the latest information, into its latest AI model. The result is still a verbose, text-heavy answer to your question, but now with links to sources cited throughout. Though, for topics like the weather, you do get visual results. Even compared to Perplexity, ChatGPT's Search interface is light on media, contextual information, and videos.Compared to Google Search, you don't get boxes of sponsored posts or product lists. You also, by default, don't get a list of links, but you can scroll down to the bottom of your answer and click the Sources button to open a short list up in a sidebar. The interface is simple: it's still just text, but better formatted, giving you different sections with citations, and highlighting different results. Should you make ChatGPT Search your default search engine?A user's default search engine is a coveted spot, and most browsers only include a couple of popular and safe options like Google Search, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and so on. So far, no browser has made space for ChatGPT Search on that list. There are, however, workarounds. In fact, OpenAI's official method itself is a workaround. It turns out that browsers like Chrome and Firefox will let you switch the default browser, but only if it comes in form of a vetted extension from their own extensions store.Before I get to these workarounds, I want to say that this caution does make sense. A search engine is a window to your entire online world. Many users don't manually type in website URLs to navigate to webpages anymore. They search on Google instead, and click the first link that pops up (a dangerous practice that leads to a lot of phishing scams, but that's besides the point).Trust is a huge factor when you're choosing a search engine, and I'm not sure if ChatGPT clears that bar yet. In our comparison between Google Search and ChatGPT Search, we found the ChatGPT Search interface to be much better than the bloated mess that Google Search has become. ChatGPT Search is good at explaining things to you directly and can be a great way to research a product deeply before buying something new. But for day-to-day use, where you're searching around to get a link to a web page, ChatGPT Search just doesn't cut it. For most users, I would recommend you stick with Google, use a couple of tips to remove the AI nuisances if you wish, or consider a privacy-friendly search engine like Kagi.How to make ChatGPT Search your default search engine, if you mustIf you've come this far and still want to set ChatGPT Search as your default search engine, you can do so using OpenAI's official ChatGPT Search Chrome extension. This works in Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave, and so on. Note, though, that Microsoft Edge throws up an extra popup when you try to enable it, and Chrome, too, will ask for confirmation before it lets go of the default search engine spot. Still, once installed, anything you type in the URL bar that isn't a valid web address will instead directly go through ChatGPT Search. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Safari and Firefox, unfortunately, don't support ChatGPT Search as a search engine, and there's no extension for them, either. Though, there's still a workaround for Firefox, which I'll go over in the next section.How to create a ChatGPT Search shortcut Even if you're able to make ChatGPT Search your default search engine, for most people, I think it would be best to create a shortcut for ChatGPT Search instead. It's called Site Search, and it's available in all Chromium browsers as well as Firefox (sorry, Safari users).It's a really straightforward process in Chromium browsers. Open Settings in Chrome, go to Search Engine from the sidebar, and in the Site Search section, click the Add button.Here, enter "https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s&hints=search" in the URL section, and use something like "@gpt" as a shortcut. Give it a name, like "ChatGPT Search" and click Save. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Now, go to the URL bar, type "@gpt" or whatever you named your shortcut, hit the space bar, and type out what you want to ask ChatGPT Search. When you hit enter, it will open the results in ChatGPT, just like it would if ChatGPT were your default search engine.In Firefox, setting this kind of shortcut requires accessing the hidden settings page. Type "about:config" in the address bar, and click Accept the Risk and Continue.In the Search bar, type "browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh", and click the Plus icon next to the search result. Now, make sure that the value is True. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Now, go to Firefox settings, and from the sidebar, choose Search. In the Search Shortcuts section, click the Add button.Add "https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s&hints=search" as the Engine URL, give it a name, and an alias, which is the shortcut. Then, click Add Engine. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Now, you've added ChatGPT as a site search that you can trigger using a shortcut. Credit: Khamosh Pathak The new ChatGPT site search will also now show up now in the Default Search Engine box, so if you really want to, you can make ChatGPT your default search in Firefox, too. Again, though, I wouldn't recommend you go that far.