OpenAI says ChatGPT handles a fifth of Google's search volume
What this answers
- How big is ChatGPT search compared to Google?
- OpenAI says ChatGPT's search-like queries are about one-fifth of Google's query volume, counting every question that sends ChatGPT to the web. It did not say which Google figure, period or regions it compared against.
- Does ChatGPT send as much traffic to websites as Google?
- No. Across 118,671 sites in Ahrefs' referral tracker in October, Google accounted for 24.74% of traffic and ChatGPT for 0.36%, per Search Engine Journal.
Adam Fry, who leads consumer product for ChatGPT, said ChatGPT’s volume of “search-like queries” is now roughly one-fifth of Google’s query volume, speaking at an OpenAI dinner in New York on Nov. 2, per Big Technology, which published the interview on Nov. 3. Fry said OpenAI counts a search every time a user’s question sends ChatGPT to the web, so each such question in a conversation counts. He did not say which Google figure, time period or regions the comparison uses, and OpenAI has not published the data. In the same interview he said ChatGPT grew from 1 billion to 1.2 billion weekly active users in about two months.
The figure counts queries, not visits. Ahrefs’ February estimate, which sorted ChatGPT prompts by intent rather than counting web lookups, put ChatGPT at about 12% of Google’s search volume. On traffic, Ahrefs’ referral tracker had Google at 24.74% and ChatGPT at 0.36% of visits across 118,671 sites in October, per Search Engine Journal.
Why it matters: A fifth of Google's queries beside a fraction of a percent of its referral traffic puts a number on the gap between being asked and sending a visit; those are different units, and channel plans that cite one as the other will overstate ChatGPT as a traffic source.
Via Big Technology ↗ · Search Engine Journal ↗
Posted to the wire November 8, 2026. Edited by Joe Balewski.