Retrieval pipelines (Labrador, scrape) pipeline/labrador

What it is

ChatGPT fetches results from several sources: an in-house index (internally labrador), purchased Google results via scraping providers (bright, oxylabs), its own SERP source and, at times, bing. Until 21 Jul 2026 the source was stated per hit in result_source. Since then it is missing. We recognise the pipeline from the signature of the results: median excerpt length, share without excerpt, titles over 75 characters. Measured 20–22 Aug 2026: local, product, entity and comparison questions sit stably at median 202 characters (in-house index); news and price questions at 131–158 characters with titles under 60 characters (Google scrape).

External evidence

• Suganthan Mohanadasan, 24 Jun 2026: four pipes from 1,240 hits; 14 Jul 2026: result_source removed on 21 Jul, fifth pipe bing.
• Danny Goodwin, SEL, 8 Jul 2026: Labrador 88.1 %, Bright 9.9 %, Oxylabs 1.7 %, SERP 0.3 %.
• Olivier de Segonzac, SEL, 17 Aug 2026: three layers index, reading cache, live open; snippet rules of the index.

For visibility

The pipeline determines what of a document arrives. Segonzac documents for the index: excerpt ~200 characters from the H1, meta description ignored, JSON-LD stripped, pages over 4 MB discarded, reading cache 30 minutes. For the Google scrape, Google's snippet rules apply. A page relying on meta descriptions and schema is not recognised by them in the index path. Whether a question runs through the index or the scrape path depends on topic (live data goes to the scrape) and, according to Mohanadasan, on the account cohort.

External sources

mohanadasan-2026-06-24 · mohanadasan-2026-07-14 · segonzac-2026-08-17 · goodwin-2026-07-08

Change history

No event has touched this object yet.

Open

• Which pipeline serves the Plus account in thinking mode? Segonzac: paid thinking 75 % Google scrape. Our K5-01 thinking and K1-01 thinking show median 202, i.e. in-house index.
• Are labrador snippets really query-independent? In our data 14 of 14 hits for K1-01 instant on 22 Aug carry no snippet at all.

Related

Query fan-out open (opened results) Snippet median (pipeline signature)