OpenAI says ChatGPT handles one-fifth of Google's search volume

A brand team that treats Google as the whole of search has just lost a fifth of the market. That is, if OpenAI's own numbers are right. Adam Fry, OpenAI's ChatGPT Consumer Product Lead, spoke to Alex Kantrowitz on Big Technology on 3 November. Fry said ChatGPT's search-like query volume is "roughly one-fifth the volume of queries of Google".

What Fry said

Fry gave a definition for a search in the same answer. "Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that's a search," he said. He added ChatGPT reaches this volume about 18 months after starting the feature. He named ChatGPT's weekly active users at 1.2 billion, up from 1 billion two months earlier. He said 250 million weekly active users use voice, between dictation and spoken conversations. He said ChatGPT generates 1.5 billion images a week. Each number is OpenAI's own claim. Big Technology did not audit them.

Fry listed the kinds of query that pull in a web search inside ChatGPT. People, places and things. Finance questions needing an up-to-date price. Health questions. The common thread is a fact that changes often enough that a static model answer is wrong.

Why the comparison is attention-worthy and attention-only

A brand marketing team hears "one-fifth of Google" and wants to divert a fifth of its search budget. That reflex is the wrong one for two reasons.

First, the comparison is OpenAI's own, from an OpenAI employee, on a podcast. Google has not published its own search query volume for years. Nobody outside OpenAI can check the one-fifth figure. Fry's definition of a search, a query that pulls a web fetch, is narrower than every Google search. So the ratio depends on what gets counted on each side.

Second, a visit from ChatGPT behaves differently from a Google click. ChatGPT reads the page and answers the user. The user may never click through. A brand that was found by a Google query would get a visit. A brand that is found by a ChatGPT query may get a mention without a click. Budget that follows clicks will not move on the same curve as queries.

What a GEO team should do with this figure

The one-fifth figure is the first dated vendor statement that ChatGPT is big enough to budget for. It is not a measured market share. Three things follow.

Watch where your brand already appears in ChatGPT answers for its own category queries. A tool that tracks AI answer citations will show the gap faster than a traffic report. A page that already ranks on Google will not automatically be quoted by ChatGPT. A page that no human reads may be the one the model picks. Rewrite the top-of-funnel pages for answer extraction: short, specific, named facts near the top.

Add a column to the search tracking sheet for AI answer visibility, alongside Google rank and impressions. Give it another year. A figure that a vendor says is one-fifth and growing will be one that a CFO asks about. The next question will be what the team did to measure it. A dated note that work started on 5 November is a better answer than none.

Source

• OpenAI: ChatGPT Search Is About 20% Of Google's Query Volume, Big Technology, Alex Kantrowitz.
• OpenAI Says ChatGPT Is At 20% Of Google Search Volume, Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz.