OpenAI Says ChatGPT Search Is Now 20% of Google's Volume

OpenAI says ChatGPT search volume now equals 20 percent of Google's — on a definition OpenAI set and a Google figure it would not source.

The claim came from Adam Fry, OpenAI's consumer product lead for ChatGPT, at a press event on Monday, as reported by The Verge. The number is real news. The way it is constructed is the part worth reading before anyone repeats it.

What counts as "a search"

Fry said the company defines a search as any time a user inputs a query that results in a web search, as opposed to tasks like defining a term or a simple how-to explanation. That is a narrower denominator than "things people type into ChatGPT," and it is narrower in the direction that helps the comparison: the prompts most unlike a Google query are the ones excluded.

The other half of the ratio is weaker still. The Verge notes in plain parentheses that Fry did not specify the source of the Google search volume number. OpenAI is comparing a metric it defined and measured against a figure for a competitor that it did not attribute.

The comparison that gives it scale

Twenty percent sounds modest until it is set against the last serious attempt. Having one-fifth as many searches as Google is still a long way from overtaking it, The Verge writes, but for comparison, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during Google's 2023 antitrust trial that Bing had about 3 percent of the search engine market share after trying for more than a decade.

Those two numbers measure different things — query volume versus market share — so they do not divide cleanly. The useful read is order of magnitude: a product a few years old is being discussed in the same frame that Bing never reached.

There is a plumbing caveat too. The Verge notes OpenAI likely uses Microsoft Bing for a significant part of its searches, along with its in-house search index, although there is still some speculation that it routes some queries through Google.

The announcement is about advertising

Much like Google, The Verge reports, OpenAI sees a potential path to profitability through ads, particularly as it approaches an IPO potentially slated for early next year. Fry told reporters the ads had 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."

He went further: "Ads have maybe shown us that we could be doing this more, actually." OpenAI announced last month that it would begin introducing images of sponsored products and services in ChatGPT rather than just a company's name, logo, and a link to its product like before.

OpenAI also has a name for the surface this runs on — "Intelligent UI," or creating a visual and interactive interface within a chatbot response. "That's where the future of this technology goes. You're talking to a canvas," Fry said.

What to watch

• Treat 20 percent as OpenAI's claim, not an independent measurement. One side of the ratio is unsourced, so nobody outside OpenAI can reproduce it.
• Sponsored images change what a citation is worth. If paid placements become visual, organic mentions and paid ones stop looking alike in the response.
• The IPO timeline is the forcing function. Ad surface area is likeliest to expand ahead of it, not after.