OpenAI says ChatGPT's search feature now handles roughly one-fifth of the query volume handled by Google Search, according to comments made by a senior executive at a press briefing this week.
Adam Fry, ChatGPT's consumer product lead, confirmed the figure during an OpenAI press event, telling reporters that search volume in ChatGPT is "roughly one-fifth (20%) of the volume of queries of Google," as first reported by 9to5Google. The claim, if accurate, would make ChatGPT the most significant challenger Google's search business has faced in two decades — and it arrives as Google itself concedes that its own AI-powered search push carries financial trade-offs. For more context on this story, see our ongoing AI trends.
The announcement drew wide coverage across the tech press, with Gizmodo describing it as ChatGPT "claiming" a fifth of Google's volume, and Search Engine Journal framing the same figure from the opposite direction: Google's search volume is about five times larger than ChatGPT's. For a product that only launched web search two years ago, either framing represents unusually fast growth.
How OpenAI Is Counting
The headline number comes with important caveats about methodology. Fry explained that OpenAI counts a "search" every time a user's prompt triggers a web search — "every time you ask a question and go search the web, that's a search," he said, according to 9to5Google.
That definition is broader than what most people would consider a traditional search engine query, and it leaves room for interpretation. The 20% figure also depends heavily on which measure of Google's volume is being used as the denominator, and OpenAI did not reveal the source of its Google comparison. Independent analysts have not verified the ratio, and Google does not publish exact query counts.
In other words, this is OpenAI grading its own homework. The company has a clear incentive to present ChatGPT as a serious search rival — particularly to advertisers and partners weighing where to spend their acquisition budgets. Still, even a generous reading of the numbers describes a two-year-old feature processing an enormous volume of queries, and a multi-outlet report published in the hours after the briefing, including coverage by The Verge, treated the scale of ChatGPT's search usage as credible even while noting the measurement's wiggle room.
Why It Matters for Google
Google's search business generated the majority of the company's advertising revenue for years, and any credible threat to query volume strikes at the core of its economics. The company has responded by rebuilding Search around AI: AI Overviews now sit above traditional results, and AI Mode has been rolled out as a separate conversational experience.
But Google has acknowledged that this transition is expensive. As 9to5Google notes, Google has admitted it faces "lower monetization" as it pushes AI into Search — AI answers consume more compute than serving ten blue links, and they can reduce the number of clicks that generate ad revenue. OpenAI appears to face the same equation. Fry told reporters that "most people do not seem to mind ads" appearing in ChatGPT and that OpenAI "could be doing this more, actually," suggesting the company sees advertising as an underexploited revenue lever.
The exchange highlights an uncomfortable dynamic for both companies: conversational AI search may win users faster than it wins revenue. Whoever solves monetization first — Google with its enormous advertiser base, or OpenAI with its growing ChatGPT audience — will define the next era of the search market.
From Chatbot to Search Engine
ChatGPT Search launched in late 2024, initially as a feature for paying subscribers before expanding to all users. Since then, OpenAI has steadily deepened the feature: real-time results, citations to publishers, shopping capabilities, and integration with the ChatGPT mobile apps. Each expansion moves the product closer to the daily utility role that Google Search has occupied for most internet users.
Fry also emphasized personalization as a differentiator, saying that "people really love" ChatGPT's personalization and contextual understanding — an implicit contrast with search results that look the same for every user. Whether that personalization advantage translates into durable search share remains an open question, but the trajectory explains why Google has treated OpenAI as a search competitor rather than merely a chatbot maker.
The competitive stakes are visible in the market reaction, too. Coverage of the briefing ran alongside a broadly positive day for Alphabet's rivals in AI and a renewed debate among analysts about how much search share Google can defend without sacrificing the advertising margins that fund its AI spending. Nvidia, AMD, and chip suppliers were reported higher the same session, reflecting investor appetite for the compute build-out that conversational search depends on — a reminder that the battle is as much about infrastructure economics as interface design.
For publishers and SEO professionals, the numbers carry their own warning. If a fifth of the queries that might have gone to a search box now flow through an AI assistant, the rules of visibility, traffic, and advertising are being rewritten in real time — and neither OpenAI nor Google has shown exactly how the new economics will balance.
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