ChatGPT Has 12% of Google Search Volume but Google Sends 190x More Traffic to Websites
Although ChatGPT has about one-fifth the query volume of Google, people use the platforms in different ways.
I wanted to see how ChatGPT compares to Google, not only in total number of searches, but also in searches where it competes with Google, how much traffic they send to websites, and the difference in CTR between programs.
Let’s dig in.
- 65% of ChatGPT usage qualifies as searchbut this can be less depending on how you define the search.
- For every search query in ChatGPT, there is 8.33 Google searche.
- Google is sending 190x more traffic on websites than ChatGPT.
- ChatGPT’s CTR is 96% less than Google’s CTR.
The data shows two different business models: Google connects people to websites, ChatGPT keeps them in the conversation. If AI search is the future of search, website traffic is in trouble.
| The platform | Search / Daily Information | Annual Total |
|---|---|---|
| 13.7 billion | 5+ trillion | |
| ChatGPT | 2.5 billion | ~ 912 billion |
Google processes more than 5 trillion searches per year (source: Google Internal Data, January 2025).
ChatGPT handles 18 billion messages every week as of July 2025, which equates to about 2.5 billion messages per day.
Not all ChatGPT information is a search query. According to a study from OpenAI and Harvard, which analyzed 1.5 million conversations, 24% are pure searches and 51.6% ask for intent. The purpose of inquiry includes interactions in which users seek advice, opinion, or information to improve judgment, rather than providing task completion.
I’ve seen some studies that use those numbers for comparison, but I don’t agree with them. Google does more than just search. There are tools for calculation, interpretation, and more included in other sections of the study. Even things like coding help are categorized, but devs have been searching for problems on Google (and Stack Overflow) for years.
For example, we see hundreds of millions of searches every month from people looking to translate things on Google.
Looking at their examples, I can classify 65% of the searches on ChatGPT as things that were traditionally searched on Google. This is higher than what the researchers classified, but I have more access to data on what people are searching for than what they did.
| Section | % of ChatGPT usage | ChatGPT daily volume | % of Google Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pure Search (facts, products, recipes) | 24.0% | 600 million | 4.38% |
| Asking Purpose (search + hint) | 51.6% | 1.29 billion | 9.42% |
| My Search Rankings (things people usually search for on Google) | 65.0% | 1.625 billion | 11.86% |
ChatGPT gets ~12% of Google’s search volume for things people typically search for on Google. In comparison, it is estimated that Bing receives 1.2 billion searches per day. ChatGPT has surpassed Bing in search!
If you haven’t seen it yet, Ahrefs is built with data from Ahrefs Web Analytics across 76,000 websites.
If we look at traffic to websites, Google sends 190 times more traffic to websites than ChatGPT. Google makes about 40% of traffic to websites and ChatGPT 0.21%.
This is where the platforms completely diverge.
I have used different category numbers, but I also believe that my search classification is more accurate than the one from the paper. I came up with ChatGPT which has 96% lower CTR than Google.
How to calculate: Estimated CTR = (Traffic Share % / Daily Queries in billions) × 10
| Platform/Category | Daily Questions | Traffic Sharing | Estimated CTR | CTR competes with Google |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13.7 billion | 39.98% | 29.2% | The foundation | |
| ChatGPT (Pure Search) | 600 million | 0.21% | 3.5% | 88% less |
| ChatGPT (Purpose Asking) | 1.29 billion | 0.21% | 1.6% | 94% less |
| ChatGPT (My Search Programming) | 1.625 billion | 0.21% | 1.3% | 96% less |
| ChatGPT (All Use) | 2.5 billion | 0.21% | 0.84% | 97% less |
Final thoughts
Google remains the leading search engine with 5.5 times the daily activity. ChatGPT entered the search in a short period of time. They have long surpassed their search rivals like Bing.
However, I am not sure if the website owners will accept the drop in traffic or will go back to AI search.
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