OpenAI Says ChatGPT Search Volume Is Now 20% of Google's

By Suad Seferi · 4 November 2026 at 12:17

OpenAI says ChatGPT now handles search-related queries equivalent to roughly one-fifth of Google's search volume, offering a new indication of how people are changing the way they find information online. Adam Fry, OpenAI's consumer product lead for ChatGPT, disclosed the figure during a discussion with technology journalist Alex Kantrowitz at an OpenAI-hosted event in New York on November 2. The conversation was published by Big Technology the following day. The comparison is notable, but it comes with an important limitation. OpenAI has not released the underlying data, and the figure should not be interpreted as ChatGPT holding 20% of the search engine market. What OpenAI counts as a search According to Fry, OpenAI counts a search whenever a user asks ChatGPT a question that requires searching the web. This means a conversation involving several questions can generate multiple searches. Requests involving writing, coding or general explanations that do not trigger web searches are excluded from the company's definition. Fry explained that ChatGPT's usage has changed considerably over the past year. People initially used the chatbot primarily for writing assistance, programming and generating content. Increasingly, they are asking questions that traditionally required visiting a search engine, including queries about people, places, current events, finance and health. The change reflects ChatGPT's growing role as an information discovery tool rather than solely a conversational assistant. OpenAI also reported that ChatGPT has reached 1.2 billion weekly active users, an increase of approximately 200 million over the previous two months. That growth gives the company a substantial audience for its search capabilities, although the number of active users does not indicate how many use ChatGPT specifically for web searches. The 20% figure needs context OpenAI's comparison raises questions about how search activity is measured. Fry did not specify which Google search volume figures were used, the period covered by the analysis or whether the comparison included the same geographical markets. Google previously reported processing more than five trillion searches annually, but OpenAI has not disclosed enough information to independently reproduce its calculation. There is also a difference between a conventional search engine query and a conversational AI interaction. Someone researching a subject through ChatGPT may ask several follow-up questions within one conversation, with each web search potentially contributing to OpenAI's count. Google Search operates differently, typically presenting a combination of links, advertisements, AI-generated summaries and other search features. The figures therefore indicate the scale of activity that OpenAI attributes to search, rather than providing a directly comparable measurement of market share. Google still dominates traffic to websites The distinction becomes clearer when examining how much traffic the two platforms send to external websites. According to data published by SEO platform Ahrefs on November 3, Google accounted for 24.74% of traffic across 118,671 websites monitored through its analytics service during October 2026. ChatGPT accounted for just 0.36% of traffic within the same dataset. In other words, Google delivered almost 69 times more visits than ChatGPT among the websites included in that analysis. The Ahrefs figures measure visits referred to websites, not the total number of searches conducted on either platform. They also represent a specific collection of websites rather than the entire internet. Nevertheless, they demonstrate that generating search activity and directing visitors to publishers are two different measures of influence. A user asking ChatGPT a question may receive an answer without opening an external source. A traditional search query, meanwhile, may result in several websites being visited. Neither OpenAI's figures nor the Ahrefs data establishes whether ChatGPT is directly replacing Google searches. What this means for publishers and businesses The development is particularly relevant to news publishers, businesses and organisations that depend on online visibility. For years, appearing prominently in Google Search has been a central objective of digital publishing and marketing. AI assistants introduce another way for audiences to discover information. Instead of searching through multiple results, users can ask questions and receive synthesized responses, sometimes accompanied by citations and links to original sources. This creates a different challenge for publishers. Producing reliable, original content remains essential, but publishers must also understand how AI systems discover, reference and present that content. Being mentioned in an AI-generated response does not necessarily produce a website visit, and visibility inside an assistant cannot automatically be measured using conventional search rankings. The available traffic data does not justify abandoning traditional search optimization. Google remains the dominant source of external search traffic in the Ahrefs dataset. However, the emergence of AI-driven information discovery makes it increasingly important for publishers to monitor both conventional search referrals and traffic arriving through AI assistants. A growing competition over information discovery Google is responding to changes in search behaviour by integrating more artificial intelligence into its own products, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. OpenAI, meanwhile, is expanding ChatGPT's capabilities beyond conversational responses toward more interactive experiences involving current information, personalised assistance and connected services. The companies are competing over how users access information, although their products increasingly combine elements of traditional search and conversational AI. OpenAI's reported 20% figure suggests substantial activity is already taking place…