News & analysis
ChatGPT Hits 20% of Google's Search Volume, OpenAI Says
OpenAI's Adam Fry told Big Technology that ChatGPT now handles roughly a fifth of the search query volume Google sees.
By Roomer Editorial · · 2 min read
How much search volume does ChatGPT have compared to Google?
ChatGPT's search volume is now roughly 20% of Google's, according to OpenAI's Adam Fry. He shared the figure with Big Technology. No further breakdown of the number — by country, query type, or time period — was included in the report.
Who is Adam Fry and why does this matter?
Fry is identified in the reporting only as OpenAI's Adam Fry, with no further detail on his role or team. His comment is the only source for the comparison. Beyond the 20% figure, the available reporting doesn't include additional detail on methodology or how the number was calculated.
What hasn't been confirmed?
The source is a short item, not a full breakdown. It doesn't specify whether "search volume" means total queries, unique users, or something else. It also doesn't say whether the trend is accelerating, flat, or specific to certain markets. Treat the 20% figure as a single data point from one OpenAI source, not an audited metric.
Roomer Editorial's take
A fifth of Google's volume, from a standing start, is not a rounding error. For travel creators, the practical question isn't whether ChatGPT is big — it's whether the people asking it "best boutique hotel in Oaxaca" ever land on a page you control.
Right now, most AI search answers surface aggregator links and big-brand inventory. If your work lives only inside platform captions and comment sections, an AI answer engine has nothing of yours to point to. A travel site under your own name, built from the videos you've already made, at least gives search engines — old or new — something indexable to find.
That's not a prediction that AI search will replace Google for travel queries. It's a bet that creators who already have a public, crawlable footprint are better positioned than creators who don't, regardless of which search product wins.
The other thing worth sitting with: booking behavior hasn't shifted as fast as search behavior. People may ask ChatGPT where to stay, then still book through a familiar interface. That gap — between where the question gets asked and where the transaction happens — is exactly where a creator's own bookable pages matter. If someone finds your name through an AI summary and then searches for you directly, what they find should be a page that converts, not a dead link to an old itinerary post.
None of this requires chasing a new platform or trying to game an algorithm nobody fully understands yet. It requires having a home base that exists independent of however people are searching this year.
Roomer Editorial's view: don't wait for a clean answer on how AI search will route travel bookings before building your own footprint. Publish your videos somewhere you control, with pages that can actually take a booking, so that however a reader finds you, there's somewhere real to land.
Action: Check whether your travel content is actually indexed anywhere outside the platform you posted it on — if it isn't, that's the gap to close first.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-20-percent-google-search-volume-adam-fry-2026-11
