Impact of Generative AI on Search Traffic and Content Visibility

Global Search Trends: Despite the rise of AI chatbots, Google’s search engine remains dominant and even grew in 2024. Google handled over 5 trillion searches in 2024 (~14 billion per day) (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) – a 21.6% year-over-year increase in query volume (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro) (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) – a growth that coincided with Google’s introduction of AI summaries in search (SGE), which increased search usage among those testing the feature (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). Fears that ChatGPT and similar tools would significantly erode Google’s traffic have not yet materialized at a macro level. In fact, Google’s global search market share was about 93.6% in 2024, barely changed from pre-AI levels (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search).

Share of AI Generative Engines: By contrast, generative AI “engines” account for only a sliver of search-like activity. ChatGPT – by far the largest – was estimated to handle around 37.5 million search-like queries per day (after adjusting for conversation length and non-search uses) (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). That is roughly 0.25% of daily search queries, or “<1% market share” (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). Even when combining all major AI chat tools (OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Google’s Gemini/Bard), their total search-equivalent volume is under 2% of global search activity (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). In other words, traditional search engines still handle over 98% of information-seeking queries. The chart below illustrates this gap: Google’s query volume towers over Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo – and ChatGPT’s portion is nearly invisible in comparison (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro).

U.S. vs Global Breakdown: The overall pattern holds in the United States, though the U.S. has seen slightly more adoption of AI tools. Google generates the majority of search queries in the U.S. as well, but its share is marginally lower than global (Google’s global share dipped below 90% in late 2024 – Google Search share appears to drop to lowest point in 10 years). StatCounter data showed Google’s worldwide share averaging ~89.6% in Q4 2024, the first time in a decade it fell under 90% (Google Search share appears to drop to lowest point in 10 years). In the U.S., alternatives like Bing (bolstered by Bing Chat) and DuckDuckGo have a few percentage points more share than globally, so Google’s U.S. share is likely in the high-80s%. Generative AI usage is strong in the U.S.: Similarweb estimates that by late 2024, ChatGPT’s website saw over 3.7 billion visits globally per month, with roughly 0.5–0.6 billion of those from the U.S. (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb) (Breaking Down ChatGPT with Similarweb: Insights into Traffic and …). This implies a substantial U.S. user base, but still small relative to Google (for perspective, Google.com receives tens of billions of visits monthly). Other AI chat tools remain niche in both the U.S. and globally – for example, Perplexity.ai was seeing on the order of 90 million visits per month by Q4 2024 (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb), and Claude.ai around 84 million (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb). Google’s own AI chatbot, Gemini (formerly Bard), grew rapidly to about 292 million visits in October 2024 (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb), reflecting interest but still far below ChatGPT’s reach. In terms of unique users, one analysis found ChatGPT had 310 million monthly uniques (Sep–Nov 2024) versus ~60 million for Google’s Gemini; other standalone AI services like Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude each attracted on the order of 10–20 million uniques (Digital 2025: AI making gains — DataReportal – Global Digital Insights) (Digital 2025: AI making gains — DataReportal – Global Digital Insights). These figures underscore that ChatGPT is the clear leader among generative engines – and even it represents only a tiny fraction of search activity at present.

Has Google Lost Traffic to AI? So far, the “traffic loss” from Google Search to generative engines is limited in aggregate. By the end of 2024, ChatGPT’s total usage (even counting all prompts) was well under 1% of Google’s query volume (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). Market analyses conclude that “people aren’t (yet?) abandoning Google Search” in large numbers for AI chatbots (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search). In fact, Google’s search query count grew during the period of ChatGPT’s rise (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). Any drop in Google’s market share has been small – for instance, Google slipped to ~89–90% share worldwide in late 2024 (from ~91–92%), while Bing and others gained slightly (Google Search share appears to drop to lowest point in 10 years) (Google Search share appears to drop to lowest point in 10 years). Generative AI likely contributed to Bing’s uptick (via Bing Chat) and to direct chatbot usage, but the shift is on the order of a few percentage points or less. As one report summarized, even “if one assumed 100% of ChatGPT’s 125M prompts/day overlapped with Google searches, its share would still be <1%” (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). When factoring in Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini, the combined AI share remains under 2% of search volume (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). In short, Google Search has not seen a major global traffic collapse due to AI – it handled ~373× more searches than ChatGPT in 2024 (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search).

However, on specific query types and niche audiences, impacts are more visible. For example, coding and troubleshooting queries that developers used to type into Google or Stack Overflow are increasingly posed to ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot. This has corresponded with a steep decline in usage of some Q&A sites – Stack Overflow’s question volume “started to fall quickly after ChatGPT was released in Nov 2022”, dropping 20%+ by early 2023 and over 50% by some analyses (Stack Overflow’s decline — Eric Holscher). Individual user behavior also shows pockets of migration: surveys and anecdotes note some users have shifted “~20–30% of [their] Google searches” to ChatGPT for certain tasks (while still relying on Google for news, navigation, etc.). So, while Google’s overall traffic remains robust, certain domains (e.g. programming help, simple fact lookup) are seeing diversion to AI tools.

Traffic Diversion and Market Share of Key Generative Engines

ChatGPT: OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the most significant generative engine in terms of traffic. It reached over 100 million users within months of launch and by late 2024 was one of the top 10 most-visited websites globally (ChatGPT is now the 8th most visited Website Worldwide). ChatGPT’s web traffic surged 115.9% year-over-year to about 3.7 billion visits in October 2024 (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb). It hit a single-day record of ~80 million visits in May 2024 (ChatGPT Hits Daily Traffic Record as Search Engine Rumors Swirl). Despite this explosive growth, ChatGPT’s share of search-like queries is only ~0.25% globally (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). For perspective, ChatGPT handles roughly 37.5 million information-seeking prompts per day (after filtering out coding, writing, and other non-search tasks) (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). That is an order of magnitude smaller than even secondary search engines like Bing (which does ~600 million searches per day) (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). In terms of referral impact, ChatGPT only recently began driving traffic out to websites (after adding source links). By January 2024, it was referring an estimated 3.5 million visits per month to a set of top news publishers – eight times higher than six months prior, but still <0.1% of those sites’ total traffic (ChatGPT referral traffic to top publishers up 8x in six months but still negligible). Even at the end of 2024, a broad study of 106 news sites found ChatGPT contributed only ~100k sessions in December (≈943 visits per publisher on average) (Referral traffic from AI platforms grows despite publishers’ attempts to block crawlers). These numbers are growing fast but remain minuscule compared to Google Search referrals.

Perplexity.ai: Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that provides answers with citations. It has seen steady but modest usage growth. In 2023, Perplexity served about 500 million total queries (averaging ~40 million/month) (The Latest Perplexity AI Stats (2024)) (The Latest Perplexity AI Stats (2024)). By early 2024 it was attracting ~50 million visits per month and roughly 10 million active monthly users (The Latest Perplexity AI Stats (2024)) (The Latest Perplexity AI Stats (2024)). Its traffic nearly tripled year-over-year by late 2024 (90.8M visits in Oct 2024, +199% YoY) (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb). Still, Perplexity’s scale is much smaller than ChatGPT’s – roughly 1/40th of ChatGPT’s visit volume. In terms of search share, Perplexity’s query volume is negligible (<0.1% globally). For example, Perplexity was referring only 0.5 million–0.8 million visits per month to top news sites in late 2023 (ChatGPT referral traffic to top publishers up 8x in six months but still negligible), far below ChatGPT’s referrals. It remains a niche tool, though one of the larger “new” AI search entrants after ChatGPT.

Google’s Gemini (Bard): Google’s own generative engine, Bard (recently upgraded to the Gemini model), saw significant user uptake when opened to the public. Between September and November 2024, Gemini’s standalone site (gemini.google.com) averaged ~60 million unique monthly visitors (Digital 2025: AI making gains — DataReportal – Global Digital Insights). In October 2024 it garnered 291.6 million visits (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb), reflecting Google’s push of the Bard AI to users. This made Gemini/Bard the second-largest standalone AI chatbot by web traffic (behind ChatGPT) (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). However, because Bard is integrated into Google’s ecosystem, its usage doesn’t exactly equate to a separate “search market share” – many users access it as part of Google Search or via Google’s AI experiments. If we considered its query volume separately, it would still be well under 1% of Google’s total. SparkToro’s analysis noted it’s “impressive that Google’s Gemini is now in second place” among AI tools, but its usage is still only a small “sliver” compared to ChatGPT (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). (Notably, Bard’s integration may also help retain users within Google, mitigating traffic loss to external bots.)

Other AI Engines: Microsoft’s Copilot (a suite of AI assistants, including a web chat interface) and Anthropic’s Claude have also grown, but from small bases. In October 2024, the standalone Copilot site saw about 69 million visits (after Microsoft began redirecting some Bing Chat users to it) (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb). Claude.ai had roughly 84 million visits that month (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb). Both saw >300% YoY growth off of 2023 levels, indicating rising interest (Rapid Growth Continues for ChatGPT, Google’s NotebookLM | Similarweb). Still, these figures are modest next to ChatGPT’s billions of visits. In terms of share of AI usage, ChatGPT likely accounts for over 85–90% of all web-based generative AI query traffic, with Google’s Bard/Gemini comprising a single-digit percentage, and all others splitting the remainder. As one dataset showed, by late 2024 about 20%+ of internet users had tried ChatGPT, whereas only ~4–5% had used Bard/Gemini, ~3% Perplexity, ~2% Copilot, and ~1% Claude in a given month. So while the AI engines category is growing fast, it remains in its infancy relative to traditional search.

Effects on Discoverability and Content Strategy in the AI Services Sector

Declining Outbound Clicks: The rise of generative search tools – and generative answers in traditional search – is changing how users find content, with implications for companies that rely on organic traffic. Even though Google’s search volume is up, fewer searches lead to clicks out to websites. An estimated 60% of Google searches ended without any click in 2024 (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search), a consequence of rich snippets and AI-powered answers satisfying queries directly. Early tests of Google’s AI Overviews (SGE) showed a dramatic drop in click-through: one study found organic results below an AI answer saw a 70% drop in CTR (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro), and even paid ads clicked 12% less. This “zero-click” trend means content-rich websites are receiving less referral traffic per search than before. In essence, some traffic is being diverted from traditional organic search results to on-page AI answers or to alternative AI platforms, bypassing the source websites.

Traffic Loss for Publishers and Blogs: Many publishers – including those in the tech and AI domain – are already feeling this shift. News and educational sites have voiced concern that chatbots provide answers scraped from their content without readers visiting their pages. For instance, The Atlantic’s team observed significant ChatGPT referral traffic growth (an 80%+ jump from Dec 2024 to Jan 2025) after partnering with OpenAI (Referral traffic from AI platforms grows despite publishers’ attempts to block crawlers). Yet for most publishers not in such partnerships, the traffic gained from AI bots is trivial. Press Gazette found that even after an 8× increase in ChatGPT referrals over six months, the 14 top news publishers got under 0.1% of their traffic from ChatGPT by Jan 2024 (ChatGPT referral traffic to top publishers up 8x in six months but still negligible). Perplexity’s referrals to those sites were even smaller (roughly 0.02% of total traffic) (ChatGPT referral traffic to top publishers up 8x in six months but still negligible). A broader FT Strategies study of 100+ publishers showed ChatGPT sent only ~100k visits in December 2024 in total (≈943 visits per publisher on average) (Referral traffic from AI platforms grows despite publishers’ attempts to block crawlers). In contrast, Google Search delivers millions of visits to a single large publisher each month. This indicates that AI engines have not offset any loss in Google traffic – they are adding a bit of new traffic, but nowhere near the scale of what publishers are losing from search declines. A journalism trade group bluntly concluded: “the amount of referral traffic from AI search engines is drastically less than what publishers typically garner from Google” (The hard truth: AI kills search traffic – The Media Copilot).

Impact on AI-Focused Companies: For companies in the AI services sector that run content-rich blogs, documentation portals, or research hubs, these trends pose a challenge. Many such companies depend on thought leadership content and SEO to attract audiences. Now, users may get answers from ChatGPT or Bard without clicking through, reducing discoverability of the company’s site. For example, an AI company’s blog post explaining a concept might be summarized by an AI chatbot for the user, who never sees the original source. Over time, this could mean lower organic traffic and fewer leads from search. Some developer-focused sites have seen sharp traffic drops post-ChatGPT – Stack Overflow’s 50% decline being a cautionary tale (Stack Overflow’s decline — Eric Holscher). In the enterprise tech space, marketers report seeing their Google search traffic “nosedive” for how-to and Q&A content since late 2022 (The ChatGPT Effect: How AI is Reshaping Website Traffic & SEO Strategy), coinciding with users “bypassing traditional websites in favor of instant AI-generated answers” (The ChatGPT Effect: How AI is Reshaping Website Traffic & SEO Strategy) (The ChatGPT Effect: How AI is Reshaping Website Traffic & SEO Strategy).

On the other hand, new opportunities are emerging. AI chatbots frequently draw from authoritative web content for answers. AI-focused companies that produce high-quality, well-structured content can still gain visibility – either by being cited as sources in chat responses or through users clicking “learn more” links. Indeed, ChatGPT’s introduction of source links has led to growing traffic to tech sites, especially education, programming, and technical documentation sites that are cited in answers (ChatGPT Growing As A Traffic Referrer, Reshaping Search Behavior). A recent report noted ChatGPT is sending increasing traffic to education and tech websites as users ask it for coding help, tutorials, and product recommendations (ChatGPT Growing As A Traffic Referrer, Reshaping Search Behavior). For AI companies, this means content strategy should evolve to cater to AI referral mechanisms as well as traditional SEO. Some tactics include:

• Ensure content is easily crawlable by AI (many bots respect robots.txt, but blocking them could mean exclusion from answers – a few publishers have attempted blocking OpenAI’s crawler, only to still see their content used via Bing’s index (Referral traffic from AI platforms grows despite publishers’ attempts to block crawlers) (Referral traffic from AI platforms grows despite publishers’ attempts to block crawlers)).
• Structure content with clear sections and factual statements so that AI summarizers can ingest and attribute it accurately. Being in the top search results remains crucial, since Google’s AI Overview and Bing/Perplexity often pull from the first page of results (How to optimize for AI Overviews and ChatGPT Referral Traffic : r/SEO). In practice, strong traditional SEO (authority and relevance) increases the chance of being featured in AI-driven answers.
• Monitor AI referrals as a new source of traffic. Businesses are starting to treat “AI search” as another channel to optimize for, tracking metrics from ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Bard, etc. (tools and analytics tips are emerging for this purpose (6 Ways to Get More AI Referral Traffic (& Track It!) – WordStream) (ChatGPT growing as a traffic referrer, reshaping search behavior)). While current volumes are low, growth trends are clear. ChatGPT’s referrals to all websites jumped 123% between September and January for one sample of SMB sites (SMB websites see rising traffic from ChatGPT and AI engines). Keeping an eye on these patterns can help adjust content strategy.

Content Strategy Adjustments: AI-focused content producers are increasingly balancing traditional SEO with AI-era considerations. Many are investing in original research, proprietary data, and interactive tools – content that AI typically cannot fully replicate or answer without visiting the site. The goal is to provide value that goes beyond a generic answer. For example, an AI service company might publish an interactive demo or a benchmarking tool on their site; if a user asks ChatGPT about it, the bot might summarize the concept but still encourage visiting the site for the actual tool. Emphasizing brand and community is another strategy: if users recognize a brand as a primary source, they may specify it in queries (e.g. “according to X company’s research…”) or seek it out directly, which circumvents some of the AI intermediary effect. Additionally, some larger publishers have struck content deals with AI platforms (OpenAI, Microsoft, etc.) to ensure proper attribution and even revenue-sharing when their content is used (Referral traffic from AI platforms grows despite publishers’ attempts to block crawlers) (Referral traffic from AI platforms grows despite publishers’ attempts to block crawlers). AI companies with valuable content might consider such partnerships in the future, turning what could be a loss of traffic into a syndication opportunity.

Summary: For now, Google Search remains the cornerstone of web traffic, and generative AI engines like ChatGPT have taken only a small bite out of Google’s dominance (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) (New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT – SparkToro). Globally and in the U.S., the vast majority of search queries still flow through Google (and to a lesser extent Bing), with ChatGPT and peers capturing a very limited share. Traffic “diversion” to AI is real but modest so far – arguably more due to Google’s own on-page AI answers reducing clicks than due to users wholesale abandoning Google for ChatGPT. Going forward, however, content-centric companies – especially in tech and AI – are wise to adapt their strategies. They face a dual challenge: sustaining their visibility on traditional search (in the face of zero-click results), and gaining presence in AI-driven discovery. This might mean optimizing content to be favored by AI summarizers, tracking referral traffic from AI platforms, and focusing on unique content that draws users in even when AI provides a quick answer. The landscape is evolving quickly, but the data so far suggests an evolution rather than a sudden revolution: generative engines are growing, yet as of 2024 they remain complementary to search, not outright replacements (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search) (Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search). Companies that monitor these trends and proactively adjust – treating AI engines as another potential traffic source and a factor in SEO – will be better positioned as generative search technology matures.

Sources

• SparkToro: AI and Search Trends
• SimilarWeb Blog: Impact of AI on Organic Traffic
• StatCounter Global Stats: Search Engine Market Share
• Symphonic Digital: The Impact of AI on SEO
• Stack Overflow Blog: The Impact of ChatGPT on Developer Communities
• DataReportal Digital 2025 Report
• Search Engine Land: ChatGPT and the Future of Organic Search
• TechCrunch: How Generative AI is Shaping Search