// 9TO5GOOGLE — MOBILE & WEB
ChatGPT has hit roughly 20% of Google Search volume, OpenAI says
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT has managed to grow its search use to around 20% of Google Search’s total volume, a staggering figure.
Google Search has had a massively dominant lead in the search space, with Microsoft’s Bing a distant competitor with a single-digit share at any given time. But, following its push into AI-powered search about 2 years ago, OpenAI says that ChatGPT is catching up in a big way.
Speaking at an OpenAI press event/chat yesterday, ChatGPT consumer product lead Adam Fry confirmed that search volume in ChatGPT is “roughly one-fifth (20%) of the volume of queries of Google.”
There’s a lot of wiggle room there, as the source of Google’s search volume wasn’t revealed. OpenAI’s measurement of what a search query is boils down to when a user inputs a prompt/query that results in a web search – “Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that’s a search.” Again, a lot of wiggle room here.
But, in any case, this would be the biggest rival Google Search has had yet, and certainly explains Google’s massive push to expand AI in Search. Google admits it is facing “lower monetization” with that push, something OpenAI is also surely dealing with in its own efforts. The Verge notes that Fry said that “most people do not seem to mind ads” in ChatGPT and that “we could be doing this more, actually.”
Fry also said that “people really love” ChatGPT’s personalization and understanding.
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