ChatGPT receives a higher proportion of paid clicks from Google Search than any other top destination on the platform. That finding comes from iPullRank's zero-click behaviour analysis, published in late July 2025, which examined 13.1 billion Google search events recorded by the Datos clickstream panel across 9.1 million opted-in users between October 2024 and December 2025.
Among all destinations ranked by total click volume from Google Search, ChatGPT placed sixth. Only YouTube, Google's own properties, Reddit, Facebook, and Wikipedia drew more clicks. Of all leading destinations analyzed, ChatGPT carried the highest paid-click share: approximately 4.75% of its Google traffic arrived through ads, compared to 0.2% for YouTube, zero for Wikipedia, and under 2% for Amazon.
ChatGPT's Paid Click Share Compared to Other Major Destinations
The gap between ChatGPT's paid-click proportion and those of comparable destinations is substantial. According to iPullRank's analysis, ChatGPT generated roughly 1.7 million clicks in a single week within the study panel. The study does not disclose OpenAI's actual ad spend, cost-per-click figures, or the specific queries being bid on, which means the data cannot establish how much of ChatGPT's paid traffic originates from defensive brand bidding versus broader keyword targeting.
iPullRank classified ChatGPT among the destinations Google finds most difficult to intercept with on-SERP answers. Only 11.1% of searches that would otherwise lead to OpenAI were absorbed by a zero-click Google experience. Google cannot satisfy a user whose intent is simply to open ChatGPT with a knowledge panel or featured snippet.
That navigational nature of ChatGPT queries makes paid placement on those searches strategically significant. The 4.75% paid-click share for ChatGPT stands in contrast to the near-zero paid-click rates observed for platforms like YouTube and Wikipedia among the same top destinations.
The Broader Zero-Click Trend and What It Means for Organic vs. Paid
The iPullRank dataset covers 13.1 billion events, 10.2 billion sessions, and 9.1 million users with continuous daily coverage from October 2024 through December 2025. The overall zero-click rate rose approximately 2.6 percentage points across that 15-month window.
The distribution of that increase is material to paid search advertisers. According to the iPullRank report, the share of searches ending in an organic click fell roughly 2.8 percentage points over the same period, while paid clicks showed no meaningful change. The October 2024 international expansion of AI Overviews to more than 100 countries coincided with the beginning of the study window, significantly widening the pool of queries capable of triggering an AI-generated summary.
The data suggests that zero-click growth during this period came largely at the expense of organic results rather than paid placements. That pattern does not guarantee paid search immunity from longer-term behavioural shifts, but within this dataset the two click types diverged in a measurable way.
Branded Search and Defensive Bidding
The study also examined the split between paid and organic clicks on branded versus non-branded queries. According to iPullRank's findings, when branded searches resulted in a click, 4.4% of those clicks were paid, compared to 3.3% for non-branded searches. The report describes this differential as consistent with brands paying to occupy space on search results pages they already dominate organically, a practice commonly referred to as defensive bidding.
The pattern is directly relevant to OpenAI: the study's analysis prompted the observation that OpenAI is paying Google to send people to ChatGPT. The dataset cannot confirm whether OpenAI's paid-click volume is driven primarily by brand defence or other bidding strategies, as query-level ad spend data is not visible in the clickstream.
Discovery vs. Navigation: The Broader Click Picture
According to iPullRank's analysis, AI tools collectively attract approximately 720,000 navigational Google searches per week within the study panel. ChatGPT accounts for the majority of that volume, with DeepSeek and Gemini contributing additional navigational queries within the same category.
The study also found that only about 14% of all Google clicks went to a website explicitly named in the user's query. The remaining 86% were classified as discovery clicks, where users were sent to destinations they had not specifically named. That ratio applies across all destinations in the dataset and frames the scale of Google's role as a discovery engine rather than a simple navigation shortcut.
For paid search marketers, the practical implication is that a large majority of clicks occurring through Google Search represent contested territory where ad placement, organic rankings, and SERP features all compete to determine where users end up. ChatGPT's position as both a Google competitor and a significant recipient of Google's paid traffic illustrates that the two platforms are operating in parallel rather than in isolation.
Methodology and Limitations
The Datos clickstream panel records real search activity from opted-in users, with each row representing a single search event in which the user either clicked a result, organic or paid, or did not click at all. iPullRank notes that the panel is approximately 94.5% desktop-weighted, which means overall figures reflect desktop behaviour more than mobile. The demographic slice used for age and gender analysis covers only one week of data and skews toward male users aged 25 to 44. The study also notes it cannot attribute zero-click behaviour specifically to AI Overviews versus other SERP features such as knowledge panels or featured snippets.
iPullRank acknowledged in the report that the study cannot determine OpenAI's actual ad spend, since cost-per-click data is not captured in the clickstream and the panel records only the paid clicks that landed on ChatGPT, not the full scope of queries OpenAI may have bid on.
