OpenAI Rides ChatGPT Momentum to 667M Website Visits, 4B Page Views in January
UBS Says ChatGPT Surpassed 100M MAUs last month.
OpenAI went from 18 million website visits in November 2022 to 304 million in December, powered by global interest in ChatGPT. The momentum continued into January as website visits rose again to 667 million and page views climbed to 4.45 billion, according to data provided by Similarweb and Digital Adoption. That page view count represents a 24x rise over the 183 million page views in November 2022.
Those website visits were driven by a sharp rise in unique users of the site, which grew nearly ten-fold in the first month after ChatGPT’s release and then nearly doubled again in January. ChatGPT is a juggernaut. It is no wonder that it is showing up as a reference in everything from TV ads to Bill Maher’s monologue.
Bloomberg reported last week that UBS Security estimates ChatGPT passed 100 million monthly active users (MAU) in January. UBS claims this makes ChatGPT the fastest application to reach the milestone. According to SensorTower, it took Instagram 2.5 years and TikTok nine months to reach 100 million MAUs. ChatGPT achieved this distinction in less than eight weeks.
Google Search Shows ChatGPT is Global
Google Search data shows that interest in ChatGPT has grown over the past two months, and it is a global phenomenon. While searches in the U.S. showed a more immediate spike in early December, searches globally have risen steadily, with the latest peak coming about a week ago.
Data from Similarweb confirms this. Since the launch of ChatGPT, only about 12% of search traffic to OpenAI.com came from the U.S., and the top ten countries accounted for just 47% of visits. Interestingly, the data is relatively stable between December and January, with a noticeable rise in traffic from India and Germany over the past month.
Many of these users may be employing ChatGPT in English. However, it also works in a reported 95 languages, which surely increases the solution’s global appeal.
When it comes to search visits, Similarweb also provides other interesting information. Search visits account for just under 30% of total OpenAI.com website visits in each of the last two months. Among those search visits, 65% landed on the blog post announcing ChatGPT in December 2022, and the figure rose to 73% in January 2023.
You may notice that accessing the ChatGPT solution depicted above as “ChatGPT Services” fell from about 9% of search visits to 4%. That might lead you to believe that interest in using ChatGPT is waning. However, this only represents search visits, and repeat users of ChatGPT would be more likely to access the service directly and bypass the search process. The rise in direct website visits to OpenAI from about 11.5 million to over 436 million can only be explained by a rapid rise in users accessing ChatGPT services directly.
Breaking Down the Numbers
The introduction of ChatGPT has also brought about a significant shift in device distribution for OpenAI website visitors. While the split between desktop and mobile visitors was 52% and 48%, respectively, in November 2022, the figures have shifted dramatically. As of January 2023, Similarweb is reporting the user devices as 65% mobile and just 35% desktop.
OpenAI now has an application that is very suitable for mobile use. Synthedia also reported and shared screenshots in January of an OpenAI mobile app in beta testing. That may actually displace some of these mobile web visits but there is clearly a ChatGPT user base interested in this feature. OpenAI should consider adding DALL-E to the same app. Combining these two features in one app would make it a blockbuster.
A more subtle shift can be seen in user gender. About 68% of search visitors in November 2022 were male, and just 32% were female. That distribution was similar in December but shifted in January 2023 to about 64% male and 36% female. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues as OpenAI introduces more applications.
What it Means
The implication of this data is clear. ChatGPT is widely popular worldwide, and that popularity has increased over the past two months. It is no wonder that Google announced yesterday that it will have a ChatGPT competitor called Bard available soon. Google wants to make sure it remains part of the conversation about large language models while it readies a series of solutions for public access. This data will likely only increase the sense of urgency in Mountain View.
