OpenAI says ChatGPT goes to the web for people, places and things. Your business is one of those things.

Cloud AI cites who it can see. This week OpenAI told us, in its own words, when ChatGPT goes looking.

On Monday night, November 2, at an OpenAI dinner in New York, ChatGPT's consumer product lead Adam Fry sat down with Alex Kantrowitz of Big Technology. The headline everyone ran was the size claim: OpenAI says ChatGPT's "volume of search-like queries is now roughly one-fifth the volume of queries of Google."

That's the number that got the attention. The more useful part for a business is what came after it: how OpenAI counts a search, and which questions send ChatGPT to the web.

The short version

• The claim. OpenAI says ChatGPT handles roughly a fifth as many search-like queries as Google. That's OpenAI's number. It didn't say which Google figure it compared against, for what period, or which countries.
• How it counts. "Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that's a search." A single conversation can include several.
• What triggers a search. Fry: people "looking up a person or people or a place or a thing" that "requires up-to-date information," plus "finance questions or health questions."
• Why that's your problem. A business is a place and a thing. Hours, services, prices, who you serve, where you are: that's exactly the up-to-date, factual stuff ChatGPT says it goes to the web for.
• What it isn't. A search is not a visit. OpenAI counted questions, not clicks. Our earlier Field Guide covers how small AI referral traffic still is.
• What you control. Whether ChatGPT's search crawler can reach your site, and whether your own pages state the facts it's looking for in plain text.

What OpenAI actually said

Kantrowitz asked what OpenAI found when it compared ChatGPT's search volume with Google's. Fry: "ChatGPT's volume of search-like queries is now roughly one-fifth the volume of queries of Google." He also said weekly users went "from one billion to 1.2 in just the last two months." Source: Big Technology, Nov 3, 2026.

On what sends ChatGPT to the web, from the same transcript:

"What people came to ChatGPT for to start, if you go back about two years, is really writing help and coding help. Those wouldn't be things that you really search for."

"What we've seen over the last year is people have grown into all these other topics. Things like you're looking up a person or people or a place or a thing, and it requires up-to-date information. That's a key element."

"Another big part is finance questions or health questions, where you really want to make sure it's up-to-date information that's quite factual, and we'll do a web search for those questions."

"It's basically anything that a user would have traditionally gone to a traditional search engine for, but is now deciding to go to ChatGPT for."

On how a search is counted, as quoted by Search Engine Roundtable: "Every time you ask a question and go search the web, that's a search." Source: Search Engine Roundtable, Nov 4, 2026.

The Verge's write-up adds that Fry "did not specify the source of the Google search volume number." Source: The Verge, Nov 3, 2026.

Why this matters more than the headline

Ignore the size fight for a second. Whether it's a fifth of Google or less, OpenAI just described the trigger.

ChatGPT doesn't search the web for everything. It searches when the question needs current facts about a person, a place or a thing, or when it's about health or money. Think about what a customer actually asks:

• "Who does same-day roof repair near me?"
• "Is this dental office taking new patients?"
• "What does this firm charge for a will, and do they do flat fees?"
• "Are they open Sunday?"

Every one of those is a place or a thing, needs current information, and two of them touch health or money. Those are the questions where ChatGPT goes out and reads pages. The question for you is whose pages.

If your site states those facts clearly, you're a candidate. If the facts live in a PDF, an image, a booking widget, or only on a directory, ChatGPT reads the directory.

What OpenAI says about getting into those searches

OpenAI's crawler documentation is plain about the search side:

• "OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features."
• "Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links."
• "To help ensure your site appears in search results, we recommend allowing OAI-SearchBot in your site's robots.txt file and allowing requests from our published IP ranges."
• The training crawler (GPTBot) is a separate setting. You can allow search and still say no to training.

Source: OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers.

Check your pages against the trigger (about 30 minutes)

1. Write down five questions a customer would ask about you that need current facts: hours, service area, what you do and don't do, how pricing works, who it's for.
2. Find the page on your site that answers each one, in plain text. If there isn't one, that's the gap. If the answer is only in an image or a PDF, that's a gap too.
3. Check robots.txt for OAI-SearchBot. Make sure you aren't blocking it, directly or with a blanket rule. Check your CDN or bot-protection settings as well, since a firewall can block what robots.txt allows.
4. Make the facts match everywhere. Your site, your Google Business Profile, the big directories. When they disagree, an answer engine has to pick one, and it may not pick yours.
5. Ask ChatGPT those five questions with search on, and note which sites it cites. Date it. Do it again in a month.
6. Change the page, not the dashboard. Monitoring is not execution. Seeing who ChatGPT cites tells you where you stand; rewriting the page is what moves it.

What this is not (honesty block)

• "One-fifth" is OpenAI's own claim. It wasn't published with a method. Fry didn't say which Google figure he used, what time period, or which regions. Treat it as a direction, not a measurement.
• Searches are not visits. OpenAI counted questions that triggered a web search, not clicks to websites. Nothing here says ChatGPT sends you more traffic.
• It doesn't say people stopped using Google. Nothing OpenAI said shows ChatGPT searches replacing Google searches rather than adding to them.
• No local or small-business breakdown. Fry named categories (people, places, things, finance, health). He didn't say anything about local businesses specifically. Applying it to your business is our read, and we're saying so.
• We don't know which search index ChatGPT uses for a given question. OpenAI didn't say in this interview. The Verge notes OpenAI likely uses Bing for much of it alongside its own index; that's The Verge's read, not an OpenAI statement.
• Allowing OAI-SearchBot doesn't guarantee a citation. OpenAI says opting out keeps you out of search answers. It doesn't say opting in gets you in.

Related New Reward Field Guides

• AI sends a sliver of your traffic. That's a reason to do the work in the right order.
• Cloudflare is helping ChatGPT find more pages. Found is not cited.
• ChatGPT searches for the names it already knows. Make sure it knows yours.
• ChatGPT searches inside the official site. Make sure the answer is on yours.
• Your Website Now Lives Inside Chat

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