B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Recent
9.4%
9.4% -- traditional search displacement rate for US desktop search users (2025)
Wider access to ChatGPT Search reduced traditional search use by 9.4% on average among US desktop search users.
- Preprint, not yet peer reviewed
- US desktop users only; mobile and international behavior may differ
- Average masks a deeper reduction (17.0%) after 20 weeks of exposure
Attribution:
View source
Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
9.4%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2025
Entity
Sample Size
45,386
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
75
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
Bocconi University (Qiaoni Shi, Kai Zhu, Kai Gu)
Primary
Tier B
https://seohandbook.co.uk/seo-news-updates/chatgpt-search-access-reduces-traditional-search-study/ ↗
Source Article
AI Search Cuts Traditional Search | The SEO Handbook
Study: Wider ChatGPT Search access cuts traditional search by 9.4%
A new working paper puts a causal number on something SEOs have watched build for two years: when people gain access to ChatGPT Search, they run fewer traditional searches, and AI search rarely sends a click back to the web. The pape…
Original Research
Bocconi University (Qiaoni Shi, Kai Zhu, Kai Gu)
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Natural experiment using staggered ChatGPT Search rollout; Comscore URL-level desktop clickstream data, Oct 2024–Jul 2025, balanced panel of 45,386 US households
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
Cite this stat
Plain Text
US desktop search users: 9.4% traditional search displacement rate. Source: Bocconi University (Qiaoni Shi, Kai Zhu, Kai Gu) (2025). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/chatgpt-access-cuts-traditional-search-9-4
HTML Embed
<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/chatgpt-access-cuts-traditional-search-9-4" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>9.4%</strong> -- traditional search displacement rate for US desktop search users<br><small>Source: Bocconi University (Qiaoni Shi, Kai Zhu, Kai Gu) (2025) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/chatgpt-access-cuts-traditional-search-9-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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