ChatGPT Search was officially released on October 31, 2024.
Less than one month later, this AI search engine is already taking serious market share and altering search engine user behavior.
Is ChatGPT Search replacing Google?
As of November 2024, ChatGPT has over 200 million weekly active users, more monthly users than Google Chrome (3.7 billion vs 3.45 billion), and a 115.9% year-over-year growth rate.
Impressive. Until we compare that to Google's estimated 4.97 billion search users.
Here's the thing.
Google's market share has slipped, with desktop searches falling to 81.95% this year versus its peak of 92%.
Much of that went to Bing, which has gained users since incorporating artificial intelligence in early 2023.
Let's be real.
Google dominated because the alternatives just weren't good enough.
No matter how many people, governments, or marketers hated it, it still represented the best way to find what you were looking for.
Until now.
So, is ChatGPT about to steamroll an entire industry? We'll have to wait and see.
But it and other generative search engines - like Perplexity with over 15 million monthly users - are rapidly reaching mainstream adoption, making it time to factor them into content strategy, SEO, and SEM.