ChatGPT Gets Googled More Than YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok

I was poking around on Google Trends the other week when I discovered something curious: Global search interest for ChatGPT surpassed the top platforms earlier this year, and no one noticed.

That seemed impossible.

For example, YouTube has been the default video platform for nearly two decades. It is often called the second largest search engine.

So I asked Xibeijia, Ahrefs’ star data scientist, to pull our data and double-check.

It turns out that global search for ChatGPT surpassed YouTube in April 2025, just 29 months after its launch.

And it’s not just YouTube. Between September 2024 and April 2025, ChatGPT surpassed TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube in monthly search volume worldwide.

This is not a story about one platform beating another. It’s about speed. ChatGPT has matched the search interest of platforms that have taken years (sometimes more than a decade) to build demand for their product. It did it in less than two and a half years.

To measure this, we used Ahrefs search intelligence data to track global searches containing each platform’s brand name or linked to the brand’s business from January 2022 to October 2025.

This includes searches like “chatgpt login,” “youtube tv,” “facebook marketplace”, anything that indicates someone is looking for these platforms.

Search volume is not a perfect proxy for platform usage (people use apps without searching), but it does show intent. If millions are constantly searching for a brand month after month, that is a habit or trend that shows recurring interest.

In the case of ChatGPT, it doesn’t look like that need is going anywhere anytime soon.

Google is still way ahead. But the gap has been narrowing since early 2023.

Google’s search volume for all global keyword searches decreased from about 1.1 billion monthly searches in early 2022 to about 713 million in August 2025. ChatGPT went from zero to about 460 million in the same period.

If current trajectories hold, ChatGPT’s search interest may match Google’s by mid-2028, passing mid-2029.

General warning:

This assumption assumes that current trends continue without accounting for market saturation, competitive responses, or shifts in user behavior.

I keep getting back to speed. Most other major platforms (social networks, video platforms, messaging apps) took years, sometimes decades, to reach this level of sustained global interest.

ChatGPT has compressed that timeline dramatically.

Of course, ChatGPT’s growth is no surprise to anyone right now. The important thing is that it still hasn’t reached the plateau.

But there is another reason: the search interest does not exist in a vacuum. It is often the leading indicator of broader market impact.

We found that search visibility correlates with stock performance for about a third of Nasdaq companies. If search interest increases or decreases continuously, market valuation tends to follow. It is not a perfect prediction, but it is a sign, which shows what people really care about.

In that sense, ChatGPT’s trajectory goes beyond platform adoption and focuses on where attention (and ultimately, money) flows. If search interest is any indication, we’re watching a significant reshaping of how people interact with the Internet happening in real time.

And if the current situation holds, it’s about three years from now that we’ll see it overtake Google in terms of search interest, too.