A new tool from Tim Souo and Ahrefs at chatgpt-vs-google.com aims to show the growth rate of ChatGPT's referral traffic compared to Google Search. Tim said the chart shows that OpenAI's ChatGPT "doesn't seem enough to catch up with Google anytime soon, given their respective traffic shares."
Tim wrote on X, "What this report shows is how traffic from Google compares to traffic from ChatGPT -- and how both grow month-over-month."
He added that this report is showing us that "so far is that referral traffic from ChatGPT is growing by about 1.5% every month." Then he added, "Which doesn't seem enough to catch up with Google anytime soon, given their respective traffic shares."
This chart is updated monthly - here is what it looks like today:
Create by the folks at @ahrefs -> 44K+ sites analyzed to see the percentage of traffic from ChatGPT versus Google. Yep, .19% right now on average for ChatGPT versus 42% for Google. ChatGPT is growing for sure, but .19%... https://t.co/rywYn1q6Ka pic.twitter.com/4DOMwsD8JB
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 19, 2025
As a reminder, back in November 2024, we had data showing how small ChatGPT was compared to Google and even more recently, Glenn Gabe showed that AI Search traffic was 1% of the referral traffic to most sites in their analytics. It is small but growing but still small.
Will it ever catch up? Seems unlikely and the Nielsen Norman Group came out with a new report/study about how AI is changing searcher behavior and it showed that searcher habits are hard to change and they know Google, so go to Google first. Most novice searchers just go to Google and see AI Overviews for their first AI search experience.
It goes on to say:
While generative AI does offer enough value to change user behaviors, it has not replaced traditional search entirely. Traditional search and AI chats were often used in tandem to explore the same topic and were sometimes used to fact-check each other.
So will AI Search replace traditional search? It seems like it will complement it and not replace it, but it is all super early.
Forum discussion at X.
