ChatGPT sends a tiny slice of Google's clicks
The first real traffic numbers from OpenAI's new reporting tool are much smaller than many people guessed.
Sites that get 10,000 to 20,000 clicks a day from Google are seeing fewer than 300 clicks a day from ChatGPT. That comes from Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_), who says the figure is based on his own clients plus other SEOs who shared their data with him over two days.
The numbers come from OpenAI's Business Hub, the reporting tool that shows how often ChatGPT mentions your site and how many clicks it sends you. It went into beta recently, and we covered it earlier. Until now, nobody outside OpenAI could see real click counts. Everything was guesswork from third party tools.
Under 1 percent for some sites
Ghotra put it bluntly in a follow up post, picturing an executive who pushed their team hard on ChatGPT, hired an outside agency and bought AI search tools, only to open the Business Hub and find the daily clicks are not even 1 percent of what Google sends.
That is one person's read on one set of sites, not a Google-wide study. Ghotra does not say how many sites are in his sample or what industries they are in. Treat it as an early signal rather than a settled number.
What this means for a small business
It does not mean ChatGPT traffic is worthless. It means the size of it, right now, for the sites Ghotra looked at, is small next to search. If you have been told that Google traffic no longer matters and everything is moving to chatbots, this is the first public data point that pushes back on that.
It also matters for budget. Paying an agency or a tool specifically to chase ChatGPT visibility is a bet, and until you can see your own numbers you are betting blind. The Business Hub is the way to stop betting blind.
What to do
If you have access to the ChatGPT Business Hub, open it and write down your daily clicks. Then open Google Search Console, click Performance, and write down your daily clicks there for the same period. Compare the two.
If ChatGPT is sending you a handful of clicks and Google is sending you thousands, keep your effort where the traffic is. If the gap is smaller than Ghotra describes, you have a reason to do more. Either way the answer is in your own data, not in anyone's forecast.
For sites doing 10K to 20K daily clicks in GSC performance report it's like < 300 daily clicks in ChatGPT Business Hub
now seeing daily clicks in OpenAI Business Hub aren't even 1% of what site is daily getting from Google search results
Be the person who already knew
One email a day. Under three minutes. You will hear about a Google change before it shows up in your traffic.