OpenAI said ChatGPT's search query volume now equals roughly 20% of Google's, according to Adam Fry, the company's consumer product lead for ChatGPT, speaking at a press event reported by The Verge.
Fry defines a search as any query that triggers a web lookup, excluding simple definitions or how-to answers, but he did not identify the source or methodology behind Google's comparison figure, making the claim an OpenAI estimate rather than a confirmed market measurement.
Fry called the result striking given that ChatGPT search launched only about a year and a half earlier.
Other estimates diverge widely: a mid-2025 third-party comparison put ChatGPT at roughly 18% of Google's daily search volume based on prompt counts.
Narrower measures of genuinely search-equivalent activity placed it closer to 7.5% to 12%, and a separate March 2025 analysis estimated Google handling about 14 billion searches a day against roughly 37.5 million search-like ChatGPT prompts.
Google still processes more than 70% of global online searches, underscoring the scale gap even as OpenAI frames the comparison as evidence of momentum.
OpenAI is betting on advertising as a path to profitability ahead of a potential IPO, and last month began showing images of sponsored products in ChatGPT rather than just text links.
"Ads have not negatively impacted the product or the usage of the product," Fry told reporters, adding that the company could expand advertising further.
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