OpenAI says ChatGPT search queries now match 20% of Google's volume

OpenAI has claimed a new milestone in the contest over how people find information online: search queries run through ChatGPT now equal 20 percent of the volume that goes through Google. Adam Fry, OpenAI's consumer product lead for ChatGPT, announced the figure at a press event on Monday, according to The Verge.

Fry explained what the company counts as a search: any user query that triggers a web search, as opposed to requests like asking for a word definition or a simple how-to answer. The Verge notes that he did not identify where the Google volume figure comes from, so the comparison rests on an undisclosed estimate.

A benchmark that puts Bing in perspective

One-fifth of Google's volume still leaves ChatGPT far behind the market leader, but the contrast with earlier challengers is stark. As The Verge recalls, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified during Google's 2023 antitrust trial that Bing held roughly 3 percent of the search market after more than a decade of effort. At that same trial, Google itself described AI as a potential disruptor and argued ChatGPT was positioned to compete seriously with it, a prediction OpenAI's new number appears to support.

There is an irony in the arrangement. OpenAI is believed to rely on Microsoft Bing for a substantial share of its searches alongside its in-house search index, and there has been speculation that some queries may even route through Google. ChatGPT's search growth is therefore partly built on infrastructure belonging to the incumbents it is being measured against.

Search is being redesigned around chat

The announcement lands amid a broader shake-up of the search business. According to The Verge, Google has been reducing conventional referrals to third-party sites while investing heavily in AI tools, from AI Overviews to generative features such as personalized results with visualizations and charts.

OpenAI is pursuing a similar direction under its own label, Intelligent UI, which means embedding visual and interactive elements directly inside a chatbot's response. Fry described where he sees the technology heading, saying that in the future "you're talking to a canvas."

Ads are the business model behind the milestone

The usage numbers matter to OpenAI partly because they underpin a business. The Verge reports that, much like Google, OpenAI sees advertising as a path to profitability, particularly with an IPO potentially slated for early next year.

Fry told reporters that ads have not produced a lasting backlash. "Ads have not negatively impacted the product or the usage of the product," he said, adding that "most people do not seem to mind ads in the product." Last month, OpenAI said it would begin showing images of sponsored products and services in ChatGPT, moving beyond the earlier format of a company's name, logo and product link. Fry suggested the early results have encouraged the company to go further: "Ads have maybe shown us that we could be doing this more, actually."

Why it matters

If the 20 percent figure holds up, ChatGPT has become a search channel larger than anything Microsoft managed to build with Bing, and it got there by changing the interface to a conversation rather than copying the search results page. That shift carries consequences for the wider web economy: publishers and businesses that depend on search traffic now face a second gatekeeper, one whose chat answers can absorb a query entirely instead of sending a click onward. The advertising expansion signals OpenAI intends to monetize that attention at scale, and a potential IPO increases the pressure to do so quickly. The caveats are real: the claim is OpenAI's own, based on a Google volume number it did not source, and its searches still lean partly on a competitor's index. Even so, the direction is clear, and a meaningful slice of the world's question-asking is moving out of the search box and into the chat window.