Launched by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based organization, on November 30th, 2022, Chat GPT quickly gained over 1 million users in its first week of release.
As an SEO expert, I always find Google’s data to be fascinating, and examining the search volume for “Chat GPT” is no different.
In December 2022, a positive trend was observed in Google searches related to Chat GPT. To see if this trend continued into January 2023, I analyzed the average monthly searches on Google for the keyword “Chat GPT”. The average monthly searches represent the number of times people search for a particular keyword.
As expected, the popularity in Google’s searches increased in January 2023 over December 2022, but the growth is unexpectedly high.
Highlights:
- The global search volume on Google for the term “Chat GPT” saw a surge of 233%, rising from 20.4 million to 68 million searches.
- In the United States alone, the search term “Chat GPT” experienced a growth of 83%, with searches climbing from 4.1 million to 7.5 million.
- The top three U.S. states with the highest percentage increase in searches for the term “Chat GPT” are Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama, all with increases exceeding 100%. Specifically, Florida saw an increase of 124%, while South Carolina and Alabama followed closely with an uptick of 124% and 123%, respectively.
- Only one U.S. state recorded over a million searches for the term “Chat GPT,” and as expected, it was California.
- The search term “Chat GPT” saw even more significant increases in European countries, as Italy experienced a staggering 509% surge in searches, while France recorded a remarkable 402% rise.
Chat GPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that uses machine learning to generate human-like text. Since its release, it has been widely adopted by businesses, researchers, and developers for a variety of applications, such as natural language processing, chatbots, and automated content creation.
The fact that it received 20 million Google searches in December 2022, just a month after its release, is a testament to its growing popularity. However, the sudden surge in interest caught many people by surprise, as the platform's rapid growth exceeded initial expectations. The increase in Google searches was over three times the initial number, and represented a staggering percentage change of 233% from 20.4 million to 60.8 million.
This tremendous growth in popularity can be attributed to the platform's impressive capabilities, including its ability to generate high-quality text that is difficult to distinguish from human writing. As a result, Chat GPT has become a game-changer in the field of natural language processing and has the potential to transform the way we interact with computers and machines.
The United States accounted for 20% of worldwide Google searches for "Chat GPT" in December 2022. However, in January, the percentage of global searches originating from the United States dropped considerably to only 11%.
Although the percentage of global searches for "Chat GPT" from the United States decreased significantly, there was an 83% month-over-month increase in the share of searches from the United States.
As the United States is a vast country, I delved into the state-level data to see how individual states fared. Which states had the greatest and least percentage increase?
Surprisingly, only three states, namely Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama, had a percentage change above 100%. On the other hand, Indiana (22%), Iowa (22%), Nebraska (22%), Vermont (22%), and Rhode Island (23%) experienced only a slight increase in the percentage of searches for "Chat GPT."
One significant milestone worth mentioning is that California achieved one million monthly state searches, making it the only state to achieve this feat.
Given the relatively small number of global searches from the United States, I decided to analyze the top 20 European countries by population to uncover any interesting trends. To my surprise, four countries stood out with over 300% increase in searches month over month. Leading the pack was Italy with a 509% surge in January compared to December, followed by France (402%), Bulgaria (308%), and Hungary (306%).
Russia was not included in the analysis because the search engine used in that country is Yandex, not Google.
Methodology
The research is conducted using Google Keyword Planner, a tool provided by Google that estimates the average monthly searches for a particular keyword in a specific location over a given time period.
The analysis highlights the popularity of the search term "Chat GPT" during December 2022 and January 2023, in specific locations.
