AI DISCOVERY
ChatGPT Search vs Google: where buying intent is getting intercepted.
ChatGPT Search launched to all free users on 16 December 2024. By March 2025 it is a visible line in referrer logs for most B2B sites we audit. The question is not whether it is stealing traffic. The question is where in the funnel it is intercepting intent.
Funnel mapping
We grouped 2,400 queries from six B2B SaaS clients into four intent stages: awareness (generic problem framing), consideration (category research), evaluation (vendor comparison), and decision (pricing, trial sign-up). Tracked Google organic CTR and ChatGPT citation frequency across all four stages, Q1 2025.
Results by stage
Awareness ("how do I reduce customer churn"): Google CTR dropped 28% vs Q1 2024. ChatGPT answered 94% of these queries without requiring a click. Vendor mentions rare.
Consideration ("best tools for customer retention"): Google CTR dropped 18%. ChatGPT provided vendor lists with citations. Being in the cited set mattered enormously. Cited vendors saw a 22% increase in direct traffic over Q4 2024.
Evaluation ("Intercom vs Zendesk"): Google CTR roughly flat. ChatGPT answers were detailed but users still clicked through for screenshots and pricing confirmation.
Decision ("Zendesk pricing"): Google CTR roughly flat. Users want to verify authoritative source (the vendor) even if ChatGPT gave them the number.
Where intent is being intercepted
The top of the funnel. Awareness and early-consideration queries are the biggest loss. These were the queries that fed content marketing, blog, and top-of-funnel SEO for the last decade. They are now LLM-first.
What this means operationally
Stop investing in thin awareness-stage blog content. It will not rank, and even if it does, it will not get clicked.
Invest in being the cited source in consideration-stage answers. This means clear category-definition content, credible third-party validation (G2, Capterra, analyst reports), and ensuring your brand and positioning are machine-legible.
Double down on evaluation and decision-stage content. "Product vs Product", pricing, feature-depth pages still earn clicks because users verify.
Sources: internal B2B client tracking, Q1 2024 vs Q1 2025; OpenAI ChatGPT Search launch; Ahrefs Q1 2025 AI search report.