AI & Search
One in five ChatGPT clicks go to Google: Study
A new Semrush study finds that Google accounts for 21.6% of all ChatGPT referral traffic — more than any other domain — while ChatGPT referral traffic overall grew 206% from January 2025 to January 2026.
Over 30% of outbound clicks from ChatGPT go to just 10 domains, with Google alone taking more than 20%, according to a new Semrush study. ChatGPT also relies less on the live web, triggering search on 34.5% of queries, down from 46% in late 2024.
Referral traffic from ChatGPT grew 206%, comparing January 2025 to January 2026. Google accounts for 21.6% of all ChatGPT referral traffic. The next nine domains bring the top 10 to just over 30% of referrals, with most other sites getting a long tail of minimal traffic.
The number of domains receiving referrals peaked at around 260,000 in 2025 before settling near 170,000.
Visibility in ChatGPT doesn't translate evenly into traffic. ChatGPT defaults to pre-trained knowledge and uses web search only in specific cases. Between 65% and 85% of prompts don't match standard keywords, reflecting more complex, conversational inputs. Queries per session jumped 50% in late 2025.
Semrush analyzed more than 1 billion lines of U.S. clickstream data from October 2024 to February 2026 across a 200 million-user panel.