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

OpenAI said on Monday that ChatGPT search volume is one-fifth of Google's. The Verge's Hayden Field quoted Adam Fry. Fry is OpenAI's consumer product lead for ChatGPT. He gave the figure at a press event in New York.

9to5Google's coverage puts the same claim at an OpenAI-hosted dinner. Fry called it a pretty amazing statistic. OpenAI started the feature about 18 months ago.

OpenAI did not publish a blog post. The claim exists as a statement at a press event, with named reporters in the room.

What Fry defined as a search

Fry told reporters that OpenAI counts a search as a query that triggers a web lookup. Asking ChatGPT to define a word or give a simple how-to answer does not count. The Verge's Field notes that Fry did not give the source of the Google search volume number he compared to.

Without the Google number, the 20 percent claim is a share of an unknown total. If OpenAI is comparing to a public figure for Google, the arithmetic can be redone. If it is comparing to a private estimate, it cannot.

Why 20 percent is a big number

Satya Nadella is Microsoft's CEO. He testified in Google's antitrust trial. Bing held about 3 percent of the search market after a decade of trying, he said. ChatGPT is at 20 percent on OpenAI's own count. ChatGPT web search is a far newer feature. The Verge makes the comparison in its report.

For a website that still gets most of its traffic from Google, the question changes. Every point ChatGPT takes is a query that no longer sends a click to a search result. Reddit's Q3 letter to shareholders gave one direct measure. Its search referrals from Google dropped by more than one million visits a week.

What OpenAI is selling next

Fry also told reporters that OpenAI is building what it calls Intelligent UI. He described it as a visual and interactive interface inside a chatbot response. "You're talking to a canvas," he said, per The Verge's transcript.

On ads, Fry said they had not hurt usage. "Ads have not negatively impacted the product or the usage of the product," he said. Most people do not seem to mind ads in the product, he added. The data had, in his words, maybe shown us that we could be doing this more. OpenAI announced last month that it would run images of sponsored products in ChatGPT. The old format was a plain name and a logo.

What a team should do with the number

The 20 percent is OpenAI's own statement about its own product. No independent source confirms it, and no absolute volume is attached to it. Treat the number as the publisher's claim.

As a claim, it still changes the planning question for a website owner. Monday's figure lines up with three other signals. Reddit's own disclosure. Ahrefs' studies on citation share. The search-referral drops that site owners have seen in GSC. Four independent signals point the same way. For an SEO team, the work now is to rank in the places that cite you back to the reader. That list includes ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Mode and Copilot.

Source

The Verge by Hayden Field, and 9to5Google.