ChatGPT Says It Runs One Search for Every Five on Google
OpenAI's new number is loose, but the direction is real. Here is how a small business makes sure ChatGPT can find it and gets it right.
By John Martines · November 4, 2026 · 6 min
OpenAI says ChatGPT now handles about a fifth as many web searches as Google. Independent counts are lower, and Google still sends far more visitors. Here is what that means for your business, and the five things to check this week.
A homeowner's furnace makes a new noise on a cold Sunday night. She doesn't open Google. She opens ChatGPT on her phone and types: "Who in my town fixes furnaces on weekends, and are they any good?" ChatGPT searches the web, reads a few pages and gives her three names with a sentence about each.
If your company does weekend furnace repair, the question is simple. Were you one of the three names? And was the sentence about you true?
On November 2, 2026, OpenAI put a number on how often that kind of question gets asked. It is large enough that it's worth an hour of your time this month.
Speaking at an OpenAI press event, Adam Fry, who leads ChatGPT's consumer product, said search volume in ChatGPT is "roughly one-fifth" of the volume of queries on Google. His definition of a search was broad: "Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that's a search."
That figure deserves a careful reading. OpenAI did not say where its count of Google's searches came from, and its definition of a search is OpenAI's own. Outside estimates are lower. In February 2026, the search tool company Ahrefs estimated ChatGPT at about 12% of Google's search volume. The same study found that Google still sends roughly 190 times more visitors to websites than ChatGPT does, because people who get an answer in a chat often never click a link.
So two things are true at once. A lot of people now ask ChatGPT the questions they used to type into Google. And Google is still where most of your website visitors come from.
How it got here:
- May 2023: Microsoft announced that Bing would be the default search inside ChatGPT, so the assistant could pull in current information with citations.
- October 31, 2024: OpenAI launched ChatGPT search for paying subscribers, built on outside search providers and content from partners.
- December 16, 2024: Search opened to all signed-in ChatGPT users.
- February 5, 2025: OpenAI made ChatGPT search available without an account.
- February 2026: Ahrefs published its estimate: about 12% of Google's volume, and about 190 times less traffic sent to websites.
- November 2, 2026: OpenAI's Adam Fry put ChatGPT's search volume at about one fifth of Google's.
For twenty years, being found meant ranking on Google and getting the click. AI answers change the second half of that. The assistant reads your page and tells the customer about you in its own words. The customer may decide without ever seeing your site.
Three things follow.
Accuracy matters more than ranking. If ChatGPT says you close at 5 when you close at 7, or that you don't do weekends when you do, you lose the job and never learn why.
Your website is now read by software. An assistant can't read hours that only appear in a photo of your door sign or a price list that lives in a scanned PDF. Plain text on the page wins.
Reviews and other sites speak for you. Assistants pull from review sites, directories and local news, not only your own pages. What those say about you shapes the answer.
The good news: most of the work is the same work that helps you on Google. Our earlier piece, [Google Is Putting Ads Inside Its AI Answers](/articles/ads-in-googles-ai-answers), covers the Google side. This one is about making sure the other big assistant can find you too.
1. Ask ChatGPT about yourself. Before you change anything, find out where you stand. Ask the questions a customer would ask, in plain words: "Who does emergency plumbing in [your town]?" "What are [your business name]'s hours?" "Is [your business name] good for kids' birthday parties?" Write down what it says. Do the same in Copilot, Claude and Gemini. This takes twenty minutes and tells you more than any report.
2. Fix the source, not the chat. When an answer is wrong, find out where it came from. ChatGPT search usually shows its sources. If it's your own site, correct the page. If it's an old directory listing, update or claim that listing. You can't edit what ChatGPT says, but you can change what it reads.
3. Put your basic facts in plain text. One page, or one clear section on your home page: what you do, the towns you serve, your hours (including holidays), how to book, and any prices you are willing to publish. Write it the way you'd answer the phone. Keep it in sync with your Google Business Profile.
4. Check that you haven't locked the door. OpenAI uses a web crawler called OAI-SearchBot to decide which sites can appear in ChatGPT's search answers. OpenAI says sites that block it won't be shown in those answers. A separate crawler, GPTBot, is the one used for training AI models, and blocking it does not remove you from search. Ask whoever runs your website, or your IT partner, one question: "Does our robots.txt file or our security service block OAI-SearchBot?" Some website security settings block AI crawlers in one click, and the person who turned that on may not have known what it would cost.
5. Ask happy customers for reviews that say what you did. "Great service" helps a little. "They fixed our furnace on a Sunday night in Clarks Summit" helps a lot, because an assistant answering a question about weekend repairs in that town can match it.
- Are our hours, service area and contact details written in text on the site, not only in images or PDFs?
- Does our robots.txt file, firewall or bot-blocking service turn away OAI-SearchBot, or any assistant's search crawler?
- If we want to keep our content out of AI training, are we blocking only the training crawlers and not the search ones?
- When did someone last ask ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini about us, and what did they say?
- Do our website, Google Business Profile and main directory listings say the same thing?
OpenAI and Google are both pushing hard on AI answers, and both are adding ads to them. Expect more questions to be answered inside the chat, and fewer clicks for everyone. Expect the numbers to keep being argued over, too: a company's own count and an outside estimate measured different things this time, and they will again.
You don't need to pick a winner. You need to be described correctly wherever your customers ask. Put an hour on the calendar this month: ask the assistants about your business, fix what's wrong at the source, and make sure your site isn't quietly turning them away. Then do it again every quarter, the way you'd check your Google listing.
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Sources (checked November 4, 2026). OpenAI's 20% figure, Adam Fry's role and his definition of a search, and that the source of Google's volume wasn't given: "ChatGPT has hit roughly 20% of Google Search volume, OpenAI says" (9to5Google, Nov 3, 2026, reporting an OpenAI press event on Nov 2); also reported by The Verge, "OpenAI says ChatGPT is catching up to Google in search" (Nov 3, 2026). Outside estimate of about 12% and about 190 times more traffic from Google: "ChatGPT has 12% of Google's search volume" (Ahrefs blog, Feb 2026). Bing as ChatGPT's default search: "Microsoft says Bing can be default search engine for ChatGPT users" (CNBC, May 23, 2023). ChatGPT search launch and outside search providers: "Introducing ChatGPT search" (OpenAI, Oct 31, 2024, updated Dec 16, 2024 and Feb 5, 2025). OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot and what blocking each does: "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers" (OpenAI developer documentation, current as of Nov 2026).