As of December 2025, ChatGPT’s knowledge of current SEO trends in Australia is derived from the data it was trained on, which includes a substantial amount of publicly available information up to its last knowledge update. It doesn’t ‘know’ trends in real-time, but it can synthesise information about them based on the data it has processed.
ChatGPT operates as a large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI. Its core function is to predict the next word in a sequence, based on patterns learned from its training data. In December 2025, this data includes Australian websites, industry publications like Search Engine Land Australia, and reports from digital marketing agencies operating within the Australian market. OpenAI now includes a ‘web browsing’ capability via Bing, allowing ChatGPT to access more current information, though this is still subject to Bing’s indexing limitations and may not reflect all Australian-specific SEO changes immediately. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) continues to monitor AI systems like ChatGPT for compliance with Australian consumer law, impacting data usage and transparency. In 2026, OpenAI plans to release updates to improve the accuracy and timeliness of information accessed through the web browsing feature. Announced for 2027 is a potential integration with more Australian-specific data sources.
Essentially, ChatGPT functions by identifying and replicating patterns in the data it was trained on, and can augment this with limited real-time web access, to generate responses about SEO trends.
