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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