Time to read: 3 minutes
It’s no secret that ChatGPT has created notable shifts for people around the world in the past couple of years. But not only is it helping users perform mundane tasks, it’s also rapidly reshaping the way people search for information and is becoming a sizable competitor to traditional Google search.
Since OpenAI announced SearchGPT in July 2024, which was later renamed to ChatGPT Search upon its official launch in October, more people than ever before have turned to the AI platform for more than just questions.
In fact, last month, Semrush published a new report that analyzed more than 80 million pieces of global data to identify how people interacted with ChatGPT. If you’re curious to learn more about the platform’s impact, let’s dig into what the report found.
How Users Are Using ChatGPT Search and How It’s Helping Websites
Here are some of the most notable findings from the report:
- People are using ChatGPT differently than Google – Shockingly, 70% of ChatGPT queries represent entirely new types of search intent not seen in traditional search engines.
- Google still has it beat for navigational searches – Nearly 50% of Google searches have a navigational intent, while only 34% did on ChatGPT. Informational searches are most popular on ChatGPT, being the goal of over 52% of queries.
- It’s boosting niche websites – ChatGPT’s reach expanded from referring traffic to less than 10,000 unique domains in July 2024 to over 30,000 domains by November 2024, showing its growth in supporting smaller websites.
- Search is still gaining popularity – As of the end of 2024, 54% of users interacted with ChatGPT’s built-in knowledge, while only 46% utilized its web search feature.
- People ask longer queries – ChatGPT prompts without search enabled average 23 words, compared to just 4.2 words with search enabled.
- It’s impacting some notable industries – Top sectors receiving ChatGPT traffic include online services (10M sessions), education and online learning (9M combined sessions), and information technology and software development (7.8M combined sessions).
- ChatGPT is outpacing Google for some age groups – Unsurprisingly, users aged 18-34 used ChatGPT more than Google in 2024.
Want to Find Out if ChatGPT Is Sending Users to Your Site?
If you’re curious if the rise of ChatGPT Search has started impacting your website traffic, there’s an easy way to check in Google Analytics 4. Here are the steps you need to take:
- Navigate to “Reports” from the left-hand menu
- Find the “Life Cycle” section from the menu, then click to show the reports under “Acquisition” and select “Traffic Acquisition”
- Once on the Traffic Acquisition report page, scroll down to where it says “Session Primary Channel Group (Default Channel Group)” and click the down arrow to change this setting to “Session Source / Medium”
- After selecting “Session Source / Medium,” you will be able to see if ChatGPT appears as a referral source and how much traffic it has produced, as well as if any users from ChatGPT have completed a key event (i.e., conversion) on your site
