Is ChatGPT really the world's second-largest search engine?

No, not by the measures that matter most. OpenAI claims ChatGPT search volume is about 20% of Google's, but that's OpenAI's own unpublished figure using a broad definition of "search", and independent trackers put the real number much lower, between roughly 2% and 12%. By traditional market-share and traffic metrics, Bing remains the actual second-largest search engine, and Google still sends far more traffic to websites than ChatGPT does.

What OpenAI actually claimed

The 20% figure came from Adam Fry, ChatGPT's consumer product lead, who said ChatGPT's search volume is approximately 20% of Google's, with the volume of search-like queries now roughly one-fifth of Google's query volume, as reported by Big Technology. Fry shared the number at an OpenAI-hosted dinner in New York, in a fireside chat covered by Big Technology and reported on by Yahoo Finance. Alongside the search claim, OpenAI disclosed it had added 200 million users in two months, taking weekly active users from 1 billion to 1.2 billion, plus 250 million weekly voice users, according to Geo News. The 20% figure is OpenAI's own number, unpublished and unverified, as Yahoo Finance noted.

How OpenAI defines a "search" (and why that matters)

OpenAI's definition is broad. Fry described a search as "basically anything that a user would have traditionally gone to a traditional search engine for, but is now deciding to go to ChatGPT for," and added "every time you ask a question and go search the web, that's a search," according to Gizmodo. A separate report via NewsBytes clarified Fry meant any user query that leads to a web search, not simple lookups like definitions. OpenAI also never disclosed which Google baseline it used as the denominator, something BiggoNews flagged, noting Google has said it processes about 5 trillion searches a year. Applied to that annual figure, OpenAI's claim implies ChatGPT handles more than 1 trillion search-like queries a year, a volume Yahoo Finance compared to roughly where Google itself stood around 2012.

What independent researchers found instead

Every outside estimate lands well below 20%. Geo News reported Ahrefs puts ChatGPT at about 12% of Google's traditional search volume, while seoClarity estimates just 7.5%. Ahrefs' own published study found ChatGPT handles 18 billion messages weekly, around 2.5 billion prompts a day, with 65% of usage qualifying as search depending on definition, and concluded ChatGPT has surpassed Bing in search while still sitting at roughly 12% of Google's volume, according to Ahrefs' research. That same study found Google sends 190 times more traffic to websites than ChatGPT, with ChatGPT's click-through rate 96% lower than Google's, as detailed in Ahrefs' analysis. A comparison by Peec AI, testing multiple methodologies including OpenAI's own usage data and referral-traffic modelling, arrived at a consistent range of 4% to 12%, as explained in Peec AI's breakdown. The widest gap comes from SparkToro CEO Rand Fishkin, whose tracking via Datos data found ChatGPT handling 66 million search-like prompts daily against 14 billion daily Google searches, a roughly 210x gap, as covered by Search Engine Land. The same report cited BrightEdge data showing AI search drives less than 1% of referrals, and noted Fishkin had Google at 373 times bigger than ChatGPT back in March, via Search Engine Land.

One outlier is worth flagging. A kime.ai analysis claims Google's web traffic share has fallen from 89% in 2023 to 71% in Q4 2025, and that ChatGPT accounts for 19.5% of global search-related traffic once mobile app usage is counted, a figure kime.ai's study argues most trackers miss because 83% of AI sessions happen in apps, not browsers. That's a different methodology from the browser-based tracking most other studies use, and it's the only source in this range that agrees with OpenAI's number.

Where ChatGPT really ranks vs. Google, Bing and others

By classic market-share measurement, Google still dominates overwhelmingly. StatCounter data cited by mpgOne puts Google at 89.94% of worldwide search, with Bing at 5.29%, Yahoo at 1.36%, Yandex at 1.31%, DuckDuckGo at 0.74% and Baidu at 0.44%. Bing, not ChatGPT, remains the official second-largest search engine by share of referrals, at 0.39% in Statcounter's September 2026 data referenced by rctrl.com. Separate traffic-tracking data cited via AndroidHeadlines shows Google still drives 24.74% of overall web traffic against ChatGPT's 0.36%. OpenAI likely still depends on Microsoft's Bing for part of its own search results, alongside its own index, according to NewsBytes, which makes "ChatGPT vs Google vs Bing" a messier three-way relationship than the headlines suggest.

Why volume isn't the same as market share or traffic

OpenAI's 20% figure describes query volume, not market share or website traffic, and the three measure very different things. The Verge's senior AI reporter Hayden Field argued one-fifth of Google's volume is still a long way from overtaking it, pointing back to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's testimony in Google's 2023 antitrust trial that Bing held just 3% market share after more than a decade of trying, as reported by NewsBytes via coverage noted in Northeast Times. During that same trial, Google itself cited ChatGPT as evidence that search competition was still possible, an argument Tech2Geek notes OpenAI's growth now makes more credible.

Our view: the 20% number is a PR framing exercise more than a market measurement. The gap between OpenAI's figure and every independent study (2% to 12%) tells you more about how OpenAI counts a "search" than about ChatGPT's actual reach.

What this means for Google's business

Google's financials show the pressure is real even if ChatGPT's scale is contested. The claim landed as Alphabet's stock fell 13.81% since its October 28 earnings report, where Google acknowledged AI Mode generates lower revenue per query, per Geo News. Alphabet's own Q3 2026 results showed Google Services revenue up 11% to $96.3 billion, with Search query growth at its highest rate in five years, yet Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said Search growth slowed partly because of lower monetisation in AI Mode, according to Alphabet's SEC filing and 247WallSt's coverage. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has previously said chatbots and search aren't a zero-sum contest, as summarised by BiggoNews.

What marketers and site owners should do about it

The honest limitation here is that no single number settles this debate, because OpenAI hasn't published its methodology and independent studies disagree by a factor of ten. What's clear is that visibility in ChatGPT and visibility in Google are increasingly separate games, each with its own rules for who gets cited or recommended. If you're trying to show up in both, read how why topping Google means nothing to ChatGPT right now and what it takes to get ChatGPT to recommend your business. It's also worth understanding how traffic from these platforms is tracked, given ChatGPT dropped its tracking tags, so your AI traffic numbers are probably wrong and how AI engines barely agree, so one blended visibility score hides the truth. If you want a starting point for where you currently stand, Sited's free AI visibility scorecard will show you.

Frequently asked questions

Is ChatGPT bigger than Bing now?

By Ahrefs' study, ChatGPT has surpassed Bing in search volume, putting it ahead of Bing by that measure, according to Ahrefs' research. But by market-share and referral data from StatCounter, Bing still outranks ChatGPT as the official second-largest search engine, per mpgOne and rctrl.com.

Why do estimates of ChatGPT's search volume vary so much?

Different studies define "search" differently and use different data sources, from OpenAI's own usage figures to Datos panel data to referral-traffic modelling. Peec AI's comparison of these methods still landed in a 4% to 12% range, far below OpenAI's 20% claim, as shown in Peec AI's breakdown.

Does ChatGPT send much traffic to websites?

No. Ahrefs found Google sends 190 times more traffic to websites than ChatGPT, and BrightEdge data cited by Search Engine Land shows AI search drives less than 1% of referrals, per Ahrefs' study and Search Engine Land.

Has OpenAI published the data behind its 20% claim?

No. The figure came from comments by ChatGPT's consumer product lead Adam Fry at an event and in a fireside chat, and OpenAI hasn't released the underlying data or clarified which Google baseline it used, according to Yahoo Finance and BiggoNews.