Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
ChatGPT Consumer Product Lead Adam Fry announced that ChatGPT’s search volume is quickly catching up to industry giant Google, which is quite an achievement if true. “ChatGPT’s volume of search-like queries is now roughly one-fifth the volume of queries of Google,” he revealed on November 3 at a press event, according to tech media outlet BigTechnology. This claim, however, came without any clear data to back it up.
Without research-based market figures to fully showcase how ChatGPT has captured 20% of Google’s search volume, this isn’t sufficient information to put stock in how the nature of search is evolving. That said, it is evident that OpenAI has managed to grow in scale and function, and is slowly changing how many search for information today. Gen Zers in particular have now started “asking Chat” their questions, and this seems like a simple turn of phrase on the surface, but as the act of “Googling” our questions starts to fall out of fashion, so might the platform.
ChatGPT may have a considerably greater number of competitors today than it did when OpenAI first unleashed it onto the world, but with the steady improvement in its models’ capabilities and the expansion of its services, the company has continued to grow in popularity, even though its on-paper monetary growth often feels questionable. In terms of search in particular, Google has held over 90% of the global search engine market, and with great ease at that. The name of the company has become synonymous with the act of looking up information online. Search engines like Bing have attempted to disrupt this monopoly, but hardly anything has come close to disrupting this success until AI.
Fry claims that ChatGPT has around 20% of the search volume that Google does, but OpenAI didn’t release any report to back up that claim. When pushed to answer how this data was qualified, he indicated that “Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that’s a search,” indicating that opening up the AI tool for a query over a search engine was what qualified. Still, we can see this shift towards AI in practice and in how search habits are changing, even if the data to back it up isn’t quite so readily available.
A Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults from June this year showed that 49% of them use AI chatbots today, a bump up from 33% who said the same in 2024. It’s a commonly held belief that this increase in AI usage is a result of users generating images and content so they do not have to exercise their originality, but the study also found that 42% use the AI tool to search for information, which was the most common use case. About 38% also used AI for work, while 25% admitted that it was for fun or entertainment, covering the top three uses of artificial intelligence.
OpenAI has had its eyes on Google’s dominance in the search space for quite a while, even coming out with a dedicated SearchGPT tool in July 2024 that many touted as the “Google killer.” This quickly proved to be an overambitious idea, with the temporary prototype service eventually being integrated into ChatGPT itself by October 2024. This was merely a search function, but what about a dedicated AI web browser to truly target Google’s position?
Thus came ChatGPT Atlas, launched as a Chromium browser in October 2025, and discontinued in August 2026. This news was met with disappointment, as there did appear to be a community of users who had switched to Atlas as their everyday Browser. Users were redirected to the browser inside the ChatGPT app instead, where the company already had steady traffic.
With this data considered, the claim that ChatGPT’s increased search volume is dull in comparison, as it appears nearly impossible to battle Google on its home ground, having to direct all interactions through the existing ChatGPT interface instead. Google has the obvious advantage of being an established name in the search space and also integrating its Gemini AI capabilities into existing services, no matter how unreliable. The Brave browser has seen some success in its integration of AI search capabilities, but as far as AI search experiences go, Perplexity may be the one to come out on top.
In a ChatGPT vs Google search share battle, Google still comes out on top. The only question is how long this will last. Google may have its fingers in many a sticky pudding, but it is its ad business that has truly changed how freely the company operates and grows, and in 2026, this very foundation of its operations appears to be shaking. Looking beyond OpenAI’s search growth exclusively, it is clear that many users are seeking out information by prompting chatbots to do it for them, whether it’s through Meta, Claude, Gemini, or another AI chat tool.
This might summon a handful of links to back up the results, but only the really committed users are likely to click on the links to verify or explore further. Google’s AI search results also do the exact same thing, discouraging any further exploration of a query, and as a result, most websites have seen web traffic dip dramatically in recent months. The shift in Google’s standing was most apparent last week, when its owner, Alphabet, lost over $500bn in market cap, dipping by 12% on the stock market.
This apparent cannibalizing of its own success appears to be a part of a long-term strategy in the hopes that things right themselves in time. As AI tools continue to take on different forms and eat into existing services, it remains to be seen just how much success can be achieved with this technology.
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