ChatGPT SEO Test: What Worked and What Flopped?

Can ChatGPT really take over your SEO tasks? We tested its new Operator mode - and uncovered what no one else is talking about. It promised to help with competitor analysis, keyword research, SERP monitoring, and link building - we put all of that to the test. The results? Let’s just say… some were a disaster. But there’s one thing Operator did well—and it might save you time. Stick around to see what worked, what flopped, and what you should definitely skip. Let’s dive in! So what's all this Operator hype about? It's basically ChatGPT with hands - it can browse the web, click buttons, fill out forms, scroll, and supposedly do your SEO tasks for you. It runs on GPT-4o with vision capabilities so it can actually see and interact with web pages. At first, we put it to the competitor analysis test. We asked –Operator to analyze SE Ranking against two of our biggest competitors, looking at SEO performance, content strategy, and backlink profiles. This is where we came across our first

bottleneck. Operator struggled to access the specialized data needed for a meaningful analysis. The insights it did provide were generic, scattered and hard to trust. Then, we tried a different approach. We used its takeover mode and gave the Operator our login, hoping it could pull detailed and more accurate SEO data and just drop it straight into Google Sheets for easier analysis. We watched it work… crossed our fingers… made coffee… came back… but look what happened: It stopped halfway through. Just left the task unfinished. Not ideal when you were expecting an in-depth competitor analysis. This is an obstacle you would never run into with a dedicated tool like SE Ranking’s Competitor Research. Unlike the AI-powered behemoth, SE Ranking does the work in a few minutes, providing you with full access to organic an d paid traffic data, backlink profiles, top-performing pages, historical data, and more - for any domain. No guesswork—just clear, accurate, and actionable data. Next, we tested SERP monitoring. We asked Operator to collect the top 10

results from both Google and Bing for three queries and organize them in a spreadsheet. Surprisingly, this part actually worked—for small tasks. It quickly grabbed URLs, titles, and descriptions for single queries. But when we asked it to handle multiple queries and organize them properly in a spreadsheet, it struggled. This is actually one area where Operator could be useful – if you just need quick SERP data for a few queries. But for anything beyond basic monitoring, you'd still need dedicated tools. Next up, keyword research. To test this task, we asked Operator to conduct comprehensive research for the target keyword “programmatic SEO” using SE Ranking's platform. This was perhaps its weakest area. Despite us giving it full access to the comprehensive keyword data - Operator provided extremely limited information, which again was disappointing. It gave us basic stats like difficulty, search volume, and CPC. No related keywords, no questions, no search intent analysis - nothing insightful. SEO pros who do in-depth

keyword research know this barely scratches the surface of what you need. Not a win in my book. Finally, link building. We tested two things: checking if backlinks to SE Ranking existed on specific URLs and drafting outreach emails. When checking backlinks, it responded quickly but wasn't entirely accurate. It marked several pages as having backlinks when they actually didn't. Where Operator actually performed well was with email outreach. It effectively scanned through emails, identified link building opportunities, and drafted quality responses. If outreach is a big part of your workflow, this feature might be worth exploring. So after all our tests, is ChatGPT's Operator worth it for SEO? As of the moment we’re recording this video, not really. At least not for serious, in-depth SEO tasks. Operator’s potential is clear, but it needs some growing up to do before it’s a staple in your SEO toolkit. As of now, it's:

Too slow for efficient SEO work Not reliable enough for data-critical tasks Requires too much babysitting, and Is limited in accessing specialized SEO data However, it is quite useful for small, repetitive tasks, like: Drafting outreach emails Basic SERP result collection, and Preliminary research that will be double-checked But when it comes to deep-dive tasks, like competitor or keyword research, or large-scale audits, you’re better off with dedicated SEO tools like SE Ranking. It gives you accurate, in-depth SEO data, paired with user-friendly dashboards, easy data integration, bulk export options and way faster results. Now over to you! Have you tried Operator for SEO yet? Did it deliver or disappoint? Drop your experience in the comments—let’s help the community figure out what’s actually worth using. By the way, we also tested one more AI agent Deep Research for the same SEO tasks, and it performed much better. The link’s in the description - go check it out!