OpenAI Says ChatGPT’s Search Volume Is Now a Fifth of Google’s
OpenAI just claimed ChatGPT is closing in on Google Search, but independent analysts, Alphabet's own earnings, and a missing baseline in the comparison all tell a messier story about who is actually winning.
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At a dinner OpenAI hosted in New York City on the night of Nov. 2, 2026, ChatGPT consumer product lead Adam Fry said in an interview that “ChatGPT’s volume of search-like queries is now roughly one-fifth the volume of queries of Google.” OpenAI is private, so the figure lacks the independent verification that a public filing would provide. The company it is measured against is Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG | GOOG Price Prediction, NASDAQ:GOOGL), and Alphabet’s stock was already falling before Fry spoke.
Alphabet fell from $324.89 on Oct. 28, the day of its third-quarter report, to $283.82 the next day, and has not recovered that ground. A 0.37% gain to $280.03 on Nov. 3 still left it 13.81% below the Oct. 28 close and down 10.36% for the year.
The small Nov. 3 gain appears unrelated to OpenAI’s claim, and the larger question is whether a rival’s own usage claim outweighs Google’s reported numbers, which show Search making less per query as AI answers spread.
What OpenAI Claimed and Left Out
Fry defined a search as “basically anything that a user would have traditionally gone to a traditional search engine for.” He named no Google figure, time period, or region, so the comparison has no stated baseline.
The metric is hard to verify because ChatGPT searches the web for many prompts even when users never asked it to. Adam Fry said ChatGPT went “from one billion to 1.2 in just the last two months.” However, Sam Altman already cited 1.2 billion weekly users on Sept. 29, 2026, and OpenAI never dated the one billion mark.
Adam Fry also said, “within 200 days, we reached more than a billion in ARR.” ARR means annual recurring revenue, a run rate that projects current sales across a full year.
Google’s Own Numbers Show the Real Pressure
Alphabet reported third-quarter Search and other revenue of $63.35 billion, up 12% from $56.57 billion a year earlier. That compares with Alphabet’s 19% growth in the first quarter and 17% in the second.
Chief executive Sundar Pichai said on Oct. 28 that the “year-over-year query growth rate is the highest it’s been in the last five years.” Queries are growing faster while revenue growth slows, and Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said AI Mode weighed on revenue because “monetization in AI Mode is lower.”
Google is accepting lower-paying answers to keep users, the same pressure OpenAI applies from outside. Even so, Adam Fry’s ad run rate of more than a billion remains small next to Alphabet’s quarterly Search revenue.
Outside Counts Undercut Fry’s One-Fifth
In February, Ahrefs estimated that ChatGPT gets about 12% of Alphabet’s volume for traditional search queries. By contrast, Ahrefs found that its raw ratio of 2.5 billion daily ChatGPT prompts from July 2025 to about 13.7 billion daily Google searches came to “nearly a fifth.”
The raw ratio counts every prompt, including coding and writing. Per TickerTrends, seoClarity estimated the share at 7.5% and called it “a modeled comparison, not a measured market-share figure.”
Ahrefs also found Google directs 190x more traffic to websites than ChatGPT. Advertisers pay for that referral traffic through Google’s ad auctions.
What Could Shift Alphabet’s Outlook Next
At $280.03, Alphabet’s stock shows a Search business that is changing how it makes money. Google is giving up some revenue per query to keep usage inside its own products.
Google Cloud revenue grew 103% in the third quarter. The stock trades at about 12 times trailing earnings.
The main risk is the cost of the AI build-out. Capital spending of $51.355 billion drove quarterly free cash flow to-$9.065 billion.
The outlook for the stock would likely weaken if Alphabet reports fourth-quarter Search and other growth below the 12% it posted in the third quarter, or if the stock closes below its 52-week low of $270.70.
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Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth, cyclical, and dividend equities that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as penny stocks.
