OpenAI executive says ChatGPT search is now about a fifth of Google's volume

What the executive said

An OpenAI executive says ChatGPT now handles about 20% as many searches as Google does. As 36Kr reported, relaying an earlier account from Cailianshe, the remark came from a head of consumer products for ChatGPT. Put simply, that is roughly one ChatGPT search for every five on Google.

The same report also cites figures for weekly users, recent user growth, images created each week and weekly users of voice mode. Those include 1.5 billion images a week, which gives a sense of the scale involved.

Reported, not proven

This is a claim from a company insider, passed along by outlets. It is not a measurement anyone has checked independently. Two things are unclear. First, how a "query" is counted: a typed question, a follow-up in the same chat, or something else. Second, whether the comparison covers all Google activity or only a slice of it.

Those details change the meaning a lot. A fifth of a very large number is still large, but a fifth of a narrow slice would be a different story.

Why a chat answer is different

Search-backed assistants generally work in steps. The model decides whether it needs fresh information, rewrites your question as search queries, pulls back pages or snippets, reads them, then writes an answer with citations. OpenAI shared no internals this time, so this is the general pattern, not its blueprint.

The real shift is from a list of links to a written answer. That also creates new ways to go wrong. The right page may never be fetched, the answer may say something a page does not, a citation may not support its sentence, or a weak source may sound as confident as a strong one.

Who should pay attention

Anyone whose customers research before they buy has reason to care. If people ask ChatGPT about your business, what it says about you matters, whether or not the 20% figure holds up exactly.

A practical start is to ask ChatGPT about your business this week and note what it gets wrong. Job seekers and students can do the same with their own names, since recruiters and teachers may look them up that way.