Key facts
- Adam Fry, ChatGPT's consumer product lead, said ChatGPT's search-like query volume was roughly one-fifth of Google's.
- ChatGPT has 1.2 billion weekly users, according to the report.
- Pew Research Center said 42% of American adults surveyed had used AI to search for information.
- Pew Research Center said 44% of American adults surveyed had used ChatGPT and 24% had used Gemini.
- Google says it handles 5 trillion searches per year.
- Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on competition from ChatGPT.
ChatGPT's volume of search-like queries is now roughly one-fifth of Google's, Adam Fry, ChatGPT's consumer product lead, told Alex Kantrowitz of the Big Technology newsletter, according to a report published on November 3, 2026. The comparison was reported by Business Insider.
ChatGPT has 1.2 billion weekly users, the report said. It did not specify how many of those users conduct informational searches rather than other tasks such as coding or generating images.
A Pew Research Center report released in the summer found that searching for information was the top use of large language models, with 42% of American adults surveyed saying they had used AI for that purpose. The survey was not specifically about ChatGPT, but 44% of American adults surveyed told Pew they had used ChatGPT, compared with 24% for Gemini, the next most common.
Google says it handles 5 trillion searches per year. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on competition from ChatGPT. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the issue in an interview with Bloomberg's Emily Chang, saying chatbots had scaled to hundreds of millions of users while Google's queries grew. "So I think it feels very far from a zero-sum game to me," Pichai said.