ChatGPT is growing to become a key part of how people understand things and look for answers online. Yet for all the attention it receives, one basic question is still a bit murky for marketers and business leaders: how many “searches” does ChatGPT actually handle compared to Google?

The difficulty in finding this data is simple. ChatGPT does not publish traditional search figures, and its usage patterns are not the same as a search engine. People use it for much more than just “searching for stuff”. What we can do, however, is work from reliable public data and state clear assumptions to form a grounded comparison.

• Based on public usage data and reasonable assumptions, ChatGPT users generate approximately 887.5 million “Google-equivalent” prompts per day when considering only the subset of interactions that are comparable to typical search queries. This is why AI Optimisation services (also called GEO services) are now available. 

• By contrast, Google handles around 14 billion searches per day, according to publicly reported figures on annual search volume.

• When these figures are compared directly, Google processes about 15.77 times more searches per day than ChatGPT, or in percentage terms, ChatGPT’s volume is approximately 6.3 per cent of Google’s daily search activity on a “like-for-like” basis.

• This comparison does not imply ChatGPT is replacing Google. But while ChatGPT is significant and influences how people look for answers, Google’s search volume remains far larger and the tools are often used for different purposes.

Read the full data source and deep dive in How Many Searches Does ChatGPT Get Versus Google?.