Confiella

Sharing

Shared ChatGPT conversations in Google's search results

In July 2025 about 4,500 shared ChatGPT conversations could be found on Google, some with names, CVs and confidential work material. Within days, OpenAI removed the feature that made this possible.

At the end of July 2025 Fast Company reported that about 4,500 shared ChatGPT conversations appeared in Google's search results. Users had shared them themselves: they had created a link with the share button and, with a separate option, allowed search engines to find it. By default no chat is public: a link is only created when the user asks for one. OpenAI had introduced the search option quietly earlier that year.

With a targeted search, anyone could read these conversations on Google, Bing and other search engines. Many were harmless, such as bathroom renovations or recipe ideas. Others contained personal data: names, CVs, emotional reflections, confidential work material. A TechCrunch reporter used the details in one conversation, a CV rewritten for a job application, to find the person's LinkedIn profile.

On 31 July OpenAI removed the feature. It called it a short-lived experiment that gave people too many opportunities to share things by accident that they did not mean to. The company began working with Google and other search engines to remove links that had already been indexed; because of caching, some results could remain for a while. One important detail: deleting a conversation from the chat history did not remove its shared link.

According to Google, search engines do not decide which pages are public: that is controlled by whoever publishes the page.

What can we learn from it?

A shared link is a public document: anyone it reaches can open it, and if a setting allows, search engines can find it too. The chatbot itself can still be used with confidence; sharing, though, is best kept for general material not tied to a client, since a detailed story can make a person recognisable even when pseudonymised. In Confiella's copy mode only the confirmed, pseudonymised request goes into your own ChatGPT subscription. If you have shared a client-related conversation before, delete the link as well, not just the conversation.

Sources

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