One in five ChatGPT clicks go to Google: Study

Over 30% of outbound clicks go to just 10 domains, with Google alone taking more than 20%, according to a new Semrush study published today.

ChatGPT also relies less on the live web, triggering search on 34.5% of queries, down from 46% in late 2024.

The big picture. ChatGPT’s growth has plateaued, and its role in how users navigate the web is evolving unevenly.

• Referral traffic from ChatGPT grew 206%, comparing January 2025 to January 2026.

The details. Most ChatGPT referral traffic still goes to a small set of sites, even as more sites receive some traffic.

• Google accounts for 21.6% of all ChatGPT referral traffic.
• The next nine domains bring the top 10 to just over 30% of referrals.
• Most other sites get a long tail of minimal traffic.
• The number of domains receiving referrals expanded, peaking at around 260,000 in 2025 before settling near 170,000.

Why we care. Visibility in ChatGPT doesn’t translate evenly into traffic, and you’ll likely see marginal referral impact. The decline in search-triggered queries also limits your chances to earn citations and traffic.

When ChatGPT searches. It defaults to pre-trained knowledge and uses web search in specific cases, including:

• User requests for sources.
• Questions about recent events.
• Situations where the model lacks confidence.

Behavior shift. Most ChatGPT prompts still don’t resemble traditional search queries.

• Between 65% and 85% of prompts don’t match standard keywords, reflecting more complex, conversational inputs.
• Meanwhile, engagement is deepening. Queries per session jumped 50% in late 2025.

About the data. Semrush analyzed more than 1 billion lines of U.S. clickstream data from October 2024 to February 2026 across a 200 million-user panel, tracking prompts, referral destinations, and search usage.

The study. ChatGPT traffic analysis: Insights from 17 months of clickstream data

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