ChatGPT Up 83% in February, Rivaling Traffic to Bing

So far, Microsoft seems more likely to gain as an investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI than as an implementer of its tech for search

Born at the end of November 2022, ChatGPT is now attracting about as much worldwide traffic as Bing, which has been in existence since 2009. Microsoft’s Bing showed some initial traffic gains when it announced the integration of technologies from ChatGPT creator OpenAI into its search engine, but they appear to have been fleeting. On the other hand, ChatGPT continues to be a growth machine, with total visits up 83% in the first 25 days of February compared with the same period in January.

Bing’s trajectory may change when its search chatbot, currently available to a limited audience of early testers, becomes generally available. As a major investor in OpenAI, Microsoft also stands to gain from the success of ChatGPT and the technologies it represents.

Key takeaways

• On a worldwide basis, traffic to ChatGPT’s web domain, chat.openai.com, was up 83% in the first 25 days of February compared to the same period in the prior month. On a few days in late February, ChatGPT attracted more total desktop and mobile web traffic than Bing, according to Similarweb estimates.
• Bing remains farther ahead in the United States, where the bing.com user base is strongest. Bing gets more than 30% of its traffic from within the U.S.
• On the other hand, in India, the #2 source of traffic to OpenAI, ChatGPT was attracting about twice as much traffic as Bing by late February.

While far smaller than Google, Bing is the #4 search engine worldwide in Similarweb’s ranking by traffic and engagement, behind baidu.com and yandex.ru.

ChatGPT is on the verge of matching Bing for total worldwide traffic

ChatGPT’s growth took off immediately after its launch at the end of November and has never let up.

Bing is farther ahead in the U.S.

The traffic gap between Bing and ChatGPT is wider if we look at just U.S. traffic. Bing is the #2 search engine in the U.S., according to Similarwebs rankings.

ChatGPT has surpassed Bing in India

On the other hand, ChatGPT is now drawing twice as much as Bing in India, one of its top traffic sources. Bing is the #5 search engine in India, according to Similarweb’s rankings, but ChatGPT matched Bing in traffic in mid-January and then just kept climbing.

The strong showing in India reflects that nation’s standing as the #2 traffic source for ChatGPT, behind the U.S.

We might guess that the interest from India reflects both demand from its technology sector, yes, but also from workers who can use ChatGPT to increase their productivity at tasks such as copywriting and coding.

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Report By: David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager

Methodology

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