ChatGPT draws more paid clicks from Google than any other top destination

iPullRank analyzed 13.1 billion search events from 9.1 million opted-in users, covering October 2024 through December 2025, to understand how Google users behave when they search and where their clicks ultimately go.

One of the standout findings for paid search marketers was ChatGPT’s unusually high share of paid traffic.

By the numbers. ChatGPT was the sixth-most-clicked destination from Google Search in the dataset, trailing only YouTube, Google’s own properties, Reddit, Facebook and Wikipedia. Millions of searches for ChatGPT occurred each week within the panel.

More significantly for advertisers, iPullRank found ChatGPT drew a greater proportion of paid clicks than any of the other leading Google destinations it analyzed.

That suggests OpenAI isn’t relying solely on organic visibility or direct traffic to attract users. Paid search is also playing a role in moving people from Google to ChatGPT.

Why we care. This research suggests paid search is holding up even as Google sends fewer organic clicks, while ChatGPT itself is becoming a significant paid-search destination. It also shows that AI and Google Search aren’t necessarily separate customer journeys — users are moving between them, creating new opportunities for advertisers to think about how paid search fits into an increasingly AI-driven discovery landscape.

The bigger picture. ChatGPT also appears relatively difficult for Google to replace with its own search features.

Only 11.1% of searches that would otherwise lead toward OpenAI were intercepted by a zero-click Google experience, one of the lowest rates among the major destinations iPullRank studied.

That is partly because many ChatGPT searches are navigational. Google can answer a factual question directly in Search, but it can’t fully satisfy someone whose intention is simply to open ChatGPT.

Paid clicks are holding up. The research also contained another potentially important signal for Google Ads advertisers.

Google’s overall zero-click rate rose about 2.6 percentage points during the 15-month study period, while the share of searches producing an organic click fell roughly 2.8 points.

Paid clicks, however, showed no meaningful change during that period, according to iPullRank.

That doesn’t mean paid search is immune to changing search behavior. But within this dataset, the growth of zero-click searches appears to have come primarily at the expense of organic clicks rather than ads.

Brand bidding still matters. The study also found paid clicks were more common on branded searches.

When branded searches resulted in a click, 4.4% were paid, compared with 3.3% for non-branded searches. iPullRank describes this as evidence of brands paying to defend their own names in search results.

That context is particularly relevant to ChatGPT. People searching Google specifically for “ChatGPT” represent highly valuable navigational traffic, making prominent paid placement potentially useful even when the brand already has strong organic visibility.

The research does not, however, reveal which queries OpenAI bids on or how much it spends, so it can’t establish how much of ChatGPT’s paid traffic comes specifically from defensive brand bidding.

Search is still a discovery engine. Another notable finding is that only about 14% of Google clicks went to a website explicitly named in the user’s query. The remaining 86% were classified as discovery clicks, where Google sent users to destinations they hadn’t specifically requested.

For advertisers, that’s important because it suggests Google’s value isn’t limited to capturing existing brand demand.

A large majority of clicks remain potentially contestable territory where ads, rankings and other search experiences can introduce users to a destination.

Bottom line. ChatGPT’s position as both a Google competitor and a significant recipient of paid Google traffic shows how intertwined traditional search and AI discovery are becoming. For paid search marketers, that suggests the emerging AI journey isn’t simply Google versus ChatGPT. Increasingly, it could be Google to ChatGPT — with an ad helping users get there.

Dig deeper. What 13 Billion Google Searches Reveal About Zero-Click Behavior