OpenAI's ChatGPT has captured 17-18% of the global search query market as of January 2, 2026, marking the first time in over 20 years that a competitor has achieved double-digit market share against Alphabet's Google, which retains 78-80% dominance.
Google deployed Gemini 3 in November 2025 and Gemini 3 Flash in December 2025 to counter the threat, with Gemini's generative AI web traffic share surging from 5.4% to 18.2% over the past year, though ChatGPT users demonstrate deeper engagement with 13-minute average sessions compared to Google's 6 minutes.
The shift toward AI-synthesized answers has created a "zero-click" reality with over 65% of searches now resolved directly on results pages, causing publishers to lose approximately $2 billion in annual advertising revenue and forcing them to adopt Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to compete for citations within AI responses.
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