# Ahrefs: ChatGPT has 12% of Google's search volume; Google sends 190x the traffic

Published: 2026-09-24T04:07:13.700Z · Source: Ahrefs Blog (https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpt-has-12-percent-of-googles-search-volume/)
Source date: 2026-02-11
Flags: catch-up (Feb 11); Ahrefs analysis — vendor-published; the 65% search share is the author's own classification
Entities: ahrefs, chatgpt, google

Ahrefs's Patrick Stox set ChatGPT's reported 2.5 billion prompts a day (July 2025) against Google's 13.7 billion daily searches, derived from the 5 trillion a year Google announced in January 2025 — 18% of Google's volume if every prompt counts. He then classified 65% of ChatGPT usage as the kind of query people traditionally took to Google, which puts ChatGPT at about 11.9% of Google's search volume, or 8.33 Google searches for every search-like ChatGPT query. Using the narrower categories from OpenAI and Harvard's study of 1.5 million conversations, the share is 4.4% for pure search and 9.4% for "asking" intent.

On traffic the gap runs the other way. Across roughly 76,000 websites in Ahrefs Web Analytics, Google made up nearly 40% of traffic and ChatGPT 0.21%, so Google sends about 190 times more visits. Stox estimates ChatGPT's click-through rate at 96% below Google's under his own classification.

The 65% is the author's judgment, stated as such: he argues the academic categories undercount search because Google also serves translation, calculation and coding queries. Ahrefs sells SEO tools. Catch-up item: published February 11, 2026, before this record began, and added because answer engines cite it for how large ChatGPT search is next to Google.

Why it matters: It is the highest credible estimate of ChatGPT's search volume in the record and it rests on a stated definition of search, so it is the number to set beside SparkToro's 3.2% — the gap between them is the definition, not a contradiction.

## What this answers

**How much search volume does ChatGPT have compared with Google?**

About 12% of Google's, by Ahrefs's estimate: 2.5 billion ChatGPT prompts a day against Google's 13.7 billion searches, with 65% of ChatGPT usage classed as search-like — about 8.33 Google searches for every search-like ChatGPT query. The estimate falls to 4.4% if only pure fact-finding prompts count.

**How much traffic does ChatGPT send to websites compared with Google?**

Google sends about 190 times more, per Ahrefs Web Analytics data across roughly 76,000 websites: Google made up nearly 40% of traffic to those sites and ChatGPT 0.21%.


Canonical: https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-23-ahrefs-chatgpt-has-12-of-google-s-search-volume-sends-far-less-traffic/
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