OpenAI Says ChatGPT Is At 20% Of Google Search Volume
ChatGPT now handles search-like query volume equal to roughly one fifth of Google's, according to Adam Fry, a consumer product lead at OpenAI. He put the figure in an interview with Alex Kantrowitz and said the product has grown from one billion to 1.2 billion weekly active users in the past two months.
Fry's definition of a search is broad: any question that sends ChatGPT to the web counts. He said people increasingly ask about people, places and things that need current information, along with finance and health questions where accuracy matters, and those prompts trigger a web lookup.
Voice is also growing, with 250 million weekly users. If the comparison holds, ChatGPT's search activity would sit above Bing's, a point Glenn Gabe raised in response to the claim. Google, for its part, says its own search volume is at an all-time high.
For brands, the shift matters because a growing share of questions that once went to a search engine are now answered inside an assistant that cites a handful of sources. Being one of those sources is the difference between appearing in the answer and being left out of it.
Reported by Search Engine Roundtable ↗
Topics: ChatGPT, Google Search, Citations