ChatGPT replacing Google is just an 'illusion'

Since ChatGPT emerged as a phenomenon, there have been frequent headlines about how chatbots will soon replace Google Search as the default search engine.

But when you dig deeper into the numbers, the truth is more complicated. Users are increasingly using chatbots, but Google search still dominates as the “front door” for news.

Google Search still holds a huge piece of the pie

ChatGPT is growing rapidly as a tool for Americans to look up information, according to a June report from Similarweb, a company that studies website activity.

Specifically, from January to May 2025, there were approximately 25 million visits to a news website after users clicked on a link in ChatGPT. This number corresponds to a 25-fold increase compared to the figure of only 1 million visits in 2024.

During the same period, however, Americans visited news websites about 9.5 billion times from using traditional web search engines like Google Search and clicking on a link.

In other words, for every American who asked ChatGPT for information and visited a news site to learn more, 379 other users used Google to do the same.

Percentage of users visiting a website to search for information compared to using an AI chatbot. Photo: Washington Post.

There is an important caveat to the behavior of users when using chatbots to get information compared to web search engines. Accordingly, chatbots like ChatGPT will interpret information from articles and news. This makes it rare for users to click on a web link to find out more information as they would with a search engine like Google.

This behavior is hurting sites and skewing Similarweb's numbers. When users use ChatGPT to summarize news events and stop there, it doesn't show up in Similarweb's web click data.

Another report, by web analytics company Datos and software firm SparkToro, found that about 11 out of every 100 website visits from users' computers go to Google and other search engines.

AI technologies — including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Claude — account for less than about 1/100 of combined website visits.

The report also found that despite the huge increase in visits to chatbot sites over the past year, users still tend to use traditional search sites overall.

“Search is one of the most popular and fastest growing features in ChatGPT. We are investing in a faster, smarter search experience and remain committed to helping people discover high-quality news and information,” an OpenAI spokesperson said.

Difficult to replace Google Search

SparkToro CEO Rand Fishkin did some statistical analysis and concluded that chatbots still don't compare to search engines.

Specifically, Fishkin said users are performing more than 14 billion Google searches per day compared to up to 37.5 million similar searches on ChatGPT. In other words, Google has about 373 times the equivalent usage of ChatGPT.

When it comes to unique app users, ChatGPT is ahead of Google's Gemini. However, Google's advantage in terms of its large ecosystem still helps it maintain its superiority.

Google Search now has over 2 billion monthly active users (MAUs) and around 1.5 billion DAUs. Even as ChatGPT is growing rapidly, ChatGPT's daily active users were only around 10% of Google Search's as of March.

Gemini’s recent growth, with daily active users nearly quadrupling since October 2024, is largely due to its strategy of pre-installing on Android devices rather than getting users to download the app natively. This is the same strategy that has helped Google Search dominate the market for years, by becoming the default choice on billions of devices, including iPhones.

Chart showing daily active users for ChatGPT and Gemini. Source: Barclays research.

Gemini is gradually being integrated directly into Google Search, giving this AI technology immediate access to more than 2 billion users each month. At the same time, Google has also signed agreements to pre-install Gemini on Android devices and Chromebooks, expanding its powerful distribution channel.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT has grown largely on organic traction thanks to its constant rollout of new features, like the impressive photo-rendering technology it launched earlier this year.

Experts and consumers alike often misjudge the speed at which new technology replaces old habits. There was once a view that consumers would buy everything online, but e-commerce actually accounts for only 16% of all goods purchased by Americans.

Until recently, Americans spent more time watching cable or free TV than they did watching streaming services on TV, according to market research firm Nielsen.

“When people and the media are crazy about AI, the technology can feel much bigger than it actually is,” Fishkin said.

Source: https://znews.vn/chatgpt-thay-the-google-chi-la-ao-tuong-post1567217.html