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

What iPullRank measured

iPullRank analyzed 13.1 billion Google search events from 9.1 million opted-in users, covering October 2024 through December 2025. Within that panel, ChatGPT was the sixth most-clicked destination from Google Search, trailing only YouTube, Google's own properties, Reddit, Facebook and Wikipedia. Millions of searches for ChatGPT happened every week.

The paid-click gap

ChatGPT drew a greater proportion of paid clicks than any other top destination in the dataset. That means OpenAI is paying for placement on the search engine it competes with, on top of whatever organic and direct traffic it already gets.

Why Google can't zero-click it away

Only 11.1% of searches that would otherwise lead to OpenAI were intercepted by a zero-click Google experience, one of the lowest rates among the destinations iPullRank studied. Most ChatGPT searches are navigational. Someone typing "chatgpt" wants to open ChatGPT. Google can answer a factual question directly in Search, but it can't fully satisfy someone whose intention is simply to reach a different product.

Paid clicks held while organic fell

Across the 15-month study period, Google's zero-click rate rose about 2.6 percentage points and organic clicks fell roughly 2.8 points. Paid clicks showed no meaningful change. Branded searches converted to a paid click 4.4% of the time, against 3.3% for non-branded searches, which iPullRank reads as brands paying to defend their own names in results.

What this means for advertisers

If zero-click answers are eating organic clicks and leaving paid alone, the lever that still works when someone searches your brand name is bidding on it, the same lever OpenAI itself appears to be pulling for "ChatGPT." iPullRank did not disclose which queries OpenAI bids on or how much it spends, so the research can't establish how much of that paid share is defensive brand bidding versus new-user acquisition. What it does show is that paid search is not fading as AI reshapes discovery. Within this dataset, it is the channel the shift left alone.