OpenAI estimates that ChatGPT’s volume of search-like queries is roughly one-fifth of Google’s query volume, Adam Fry, ChatGPT’s consumer product lead, said. The comparison is a company claim and has not been independently verified.
Fry discussed the figures with journalist Alex Kantrowitz at an OpenAI-hosted dinner in New York on November 2, 2026. He also said ChatGPT had grown from 1 billion to 1.2 billion weekly active users over the preceding two months.
What OpenAI counts as a search
Fry said ChatGPT search activity is counted when a question prompts a web lookup. “Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that’s a search,” he said.
He pointed to questions about people, places and other subjects that require up-to-date information. Finance and health questions were other examples in which ChatGPT would search the web for current information, he said.
Fry said users had expanded into these topics over the previous year. His description ties search activity to questions involving web lookups, rather than treating every ChatGPT message as a search. He contrasted those requests with writing and coding help, which he described as earlier uses of the service.
User growth and limits of the comparison
Fry described the increase in weekly active users as approximately 100 million additional users in each of two consecutive 30-day periods. The reported total represents growth of 200 million users over two months.
Fry also reported 250 million weekly users across ChatGPT’s dictation and spoken conversation features. The user-growth and voice figures have not been independently verified.
The search-volume comparison uses Google’s query volume as its reference point. It does not establish a 20% share of the overall search market, which would require measuring ChatGPT against the total activity across the market.
The figure also does not, by itself, establish ChatGPT’s search ranking relative to Bing. That comparison would require figures measured on a consistent basis. Weekly active users, meanwhile, measure ChatGPT’s audience rather than the number of web searches it performs.
