ChatGPT’s search surge: 1% market share predicted by 2025

Could ChatGPT search have a 1% share of the search market by sometime next year? Yes, according to new internal data that enterprise SEO platform shared today with Search Engine Land.

• “For the first time we can see a trajectory where ChatGPT could cross the magic 1% market share threshold sometime next year,” according to Jim Yu, founder and executive chair of BrightEdge.

Why we care. AI search is evolving quickly. It is important to watch how people adopt AI search because it may alter the way people discover you, your brand, or your website. We’re watching it happen, month after month, right now. And with ChatGPT search now available to all free users, this growth could further accelerate.

ChatGPT vs. Perplexity. ChatGPT is now 6x larger than Perplexity, according to an LLM referral analysis of November traffic by BrightEdge. Also, search traffic from ChatGPT (up 44%) and Perplexity (up 71%) continues to grow month over month.

But. Google is still far and away the leader, with 92.4% of referral traffic coming from Google. Meanwhile, Microsoft Bing’s market share was 4.2% in November.

Wait… Maybe you heard that Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SparkToro, last month estimated ChatGPT’s search market share was 4.33%, based on data from SimilarWeb and Datos (a Semrush company)? How is there such a big difference and confusion over the market share numbers?

Well, this BrightEdge analysis is based on referral data. Also, Fishkin later downplayed the 4% figure during his BrightonSEO keynote, because not every prompt/chat is a “search.”

So if you heard that ChatGPT’s search market share is 4%, you can safely call that stat wrong and disregard it.