A recent look at U.S. desktop browsing shows ChatGPT directed people to outside websites in 5.2% of sessions, compared to 31.1% for Google searches. The paper, conducted by Bocconi University researchers, examines Comscore clickstream data to gain insight into how broader access to ChatGPT has impacted traditional search.
What The Data Shows
When people click out from ChatGPT, they tend to visit a different set of websites than visitors referred by Google. These are more often reference and knowledge sites, tools, SaaS platforms, and academic or developer sites. Ad-supported sites make up 27.6 percentage points less of the referral traffic.
Google’s referral traffic mostly points to popular destinations like YouTube, Reddit, and Wikipedia, while ChatGPT directs visitors more towards smaller, specialized sites. The authors observe that ChatGPT tends to send people to non-profit, subscription-based, and freemium platforms, moving away from ad-supported sites that rely heavily on referrals.
The authors are cautious about how much they should interpret this data, stating:
Our claim is deliberately narrower than a welfare claim: we measure a change in observable traffic allocation, not consumer surplus, publisher revenue, or long-run content production.
The researchers treat each conversation as a single exchange and assess whether it led to a clean outbound click. ChatGPT’s monthly referral rate rose from about 2.5% to nearly 6.5% during the measurement period, though still below Google’s per-query rate.
What Wider Access Did To Search
OpenAI gradually expanded ChatGPT Search access: paid subscribers by October 2024; free users by December of that year; and anonymous users by February 2025.
Broader access reduced weekly traditional search queries by 9.4%, with the reduction reaching 17% after 20 weeks. When comparing two groups already using ChatGPT, the decrease was 4.9% on average, rising to 8.2% after 20 weeks.
The biggest decline was in searches for informational content, with academic research referrals dropping 32.8% and references 26.5%. Transactional and recreational searches barely changed.
Why This Matters
ChatGPT sends fewer referrals than Google and also directs people to different parts of the web. The most affected categories are academic, reference, developer, and news, although reference and knowledge sites are among the more common browsing contexts for ChatGPT.
SEJ covered Pew Research Center data showing that users click links much less often when an AI summary is present, with most citations coming from a few major platforms. The Bocconi paper expands on this, including estimates of how broader access has influenced traditional search usage.
Looking Ahead
The authors question whether content creators will keep publishing at the same scale when AI search uses their work but generates fewer visits. To answer this, we need more than just U.S. desktop data. We need mobile, international, and revenue records to better understand the potential impact.
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