OpenAI says ChatGPT now handles search-like queries at about one-fifth of Google’s volume, giving a clearer measure of the chatbot’s competition with traditional search. The figure does not show how many of ChatGPT’s 1.2 billion weekly users use it to find information, or how quickly people are shifting away from conventional search.
OpenAI puts ChatGPT search at 20% of Google’s volume
Adam Fry, OpenAI’s head of consumer products, said ChatGPT’s “search-like” query volume is about 20% of Google’s. OpenAI did not provide an absolute query count or explain how it defines and measures these searches, limiting what can be inferred about the pace of the shift to AI tools.
OpenAI says ChatGPT has 1.2 billion users a week. They use the service to write code, generate images, hold conversations and look up information, but the company has not disclosed the share of activity devoted to each purpose. Even without that breakdown, the figure points to a new contender for search traffic — a market that shapes how technology companies compete for user attention and digital advertising.
A Pew Research Center survey published this summer found that 42% of U.S. adults surveyed had used AI to search for information, making it the most common use listed. Among employed respondents, 38% said they had used AI for work tasks. The survey was not limited to ChatGPT, but it was the most widely used AI tool in the results: 44% of adults said they had tried it, compared with 24% for Google’s Gemini.
Google’s search business remains far larger
Google says its search service handles 5 trillion searches a year. Search has long been a major business for Alphabet and a significant source of earnings. ChatGPT reaching roughly one-fifth of Google’s query volume does not put the two on equal footing, nor does it by itself show that Google is losing search traffic or revenue.
Some users, however, have criticized the relevance and quality of Google’s results in recent years. Pages optimized for search engines can make it harder to quickly find information that is both useful and trustworthy. Users have sometimes added “Reddit” to their Google searches to surface first-hand discussions, a practice that helped send traffic to the forum platform.
Reddit recently said referrals from Google search had declined and that it did not expect that traffic to recover. The company cited Google’s AI Overviews as one factor in the change. The impact of AI on search is therefore not confined to chatbots competing for users: it may also alter how traditional search engines direct visitors to other websites.
Accuracy remains a challenge for AI answers
ChatGPT can produce a direct response without requiring users to sift through a list of webpages, but generative AI can also return false information. Google’s own AI tools have produced unreliable suggestions, including advice to put glue on pizza. Improvements to these systems do not remove the need to verify factual claims.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai addressed competition from chatbots last year, saying Google’s query volume was growing even as conversational products reached hundreds of millions of users. He pointed to TikTok and YouTube as examples of new platforms expanding without necessarily making the market a zero-sum contest. Google did not immediately respond at the time to a request for comment on competition from ChatGPT.
Google declared a “red alert” in 2022 as ChatGPT gained momentum. ChatGPT’s search-like queries have since reached about one-fifth of Google’s reported volume, but the companies have not disclosed enough to compare user retention, query frequency or monetization directly. What is clearer is that more people are adding chatbots to their search options, while answer accuracy and changes in Google referrals remain key measures of how the competition is evolving.