ChatGPT takes on Google: OpenAI already claims 20% of search volume

OpenAI cited an unprecedented figure in a conversation with the press earlier this week: the volume of searches handled by ChatGPT would reach around 20% of Google’s. The estimate comes from Adam Fry, who leads the consumer ChatGPT product, roughly two years after web search was added to the chatbot.Bing, meanwhile, would remain confined to a single-digit share.

What exactly does OpenAI count?

“Every time you ask a question and the answer involves a web search, it is a search,” says Adam Fry. The definition is broad: it encompasses any query that triggers a web consultation, including when ChatGPT decides on its own to go there and draw from it. The comparison point, however, remains unclear: OpenAI does not specify either the source or the scope of the volume of queries attributed to Google, which leaves the ratio with a comfortable margin of interpretation. The period covered by its own measurement has not been detailed either.

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An independent estimate published in March put the same ratio at around 12%, counting 65% of ChatGPT’s activity as searches. The breakdown of uses came from a study conducted by OpenAI with Harvard researchers on 1.5 million conversations. The volume figures were also dated: ChatGPT’s activity was captured in the summer of 2025, while Google’s came via a report from early 2025. Between the 12% at the time and the 20% claimed today, the methods and periods differ too much for this to be read as a simple progression.

Should Google be worried?

The same estimate documented an unchanged balance of power in traffic: around 40% of visits to websites come from Google, 0.21% from ChatGPT, a gap of 1 to 190.Google nevertheless acknowledged in late October that monetization was on the decline, linked to the growing role of AI in its own search engine. The broader picture has also shifted since spring, with ChatGPT having lost in June the majority of the AI market it had held until then.

ChatGPT’s web search launched in late 2024, and its publisher now presents it as a direct rival to Google’s search engine. Advertising would not deter users, to such an extent that Adam Fry estimates that OpenAI could “make more of it”; personalization of responses, meanwhile, would rank among the service’s most popular features. Even at 20%, it would still remain to turn those searches into revenue—the exact arena on which Google built its fortune and where ChatGPT is taking its first steps.

OpenAI now squares up to Google in the arena where the latter earns its living: search. And it does so at a time when advertising is making its way into ChatGPT, announced in France for the end of the summer. Advertisers, for their part, know how to count.

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Source: Big Technology