Sujan Sarkar
SEO is alive and well. Rank on top of both traditional search engines and AI chatbots.
The way we search for information is evolving–fast. Just two years ago, if you had a question, your instinct was to “Google it.” Today, billions of users are turning to AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini for instant, conversational answers—no scrolling, no clicking, no blue links.
This shift has sparked intense debate:
Are AI chatbots quietly replacing traditional search engines?
For SEO professionals, content creators, and marketers whose work revolves around organic search traffic, this question isn’t just philosophical—it’s existential. A major decline in search engine usage could mean fewer clicks, fewer readers, and fewer clients investing in SEO. The ripple effects could disrupt an entire industry.
While speculation runs wild, data-driven answers have been scarce. That’s why we decided to dig deep.
In this research study by OneLittleWeb, we analyze two full years of global web traffic—comparing the top 10 search engines with the top 10 AI chatbots. Drawing from Semrush and aitools.xyz data from April 2023 to March 2025, we track growth, user behavior shifts, and the emerging battle between classic search and conversational AI.
The findings may surprise you—and will certainly reshape how we think about the future of SEO.
As AI chatbots grow in popularity, one of the most pressing questions for SEO professionals and digital strategists is whether their rise is causing a drop in traditional search engine usage. To examine this, we compared the total web visits across the top 10 AI chatbots and top 10 search engines over the past 24 months—divided into two 12-month periods from April 2023 to March 2025.
The goal of this section is to determine whether the increased usage of AI chatbots is meaningfully replacing visits to search engines. Specifically, we looked at:
Despite AI chatbots experiencing explosive growth—an 80.92% increase year-over-year—search engine traffic has remained largely stable. The total drop in visits across search engines was less than 1%, not enough to suggest that AI usage is significantly eating into traditional search behavior just yet.
Let’s dive deeper into the numbers.
Between April 2024 and March 2025, the top 10 AI chatbots collectively received 55.2 billion visits, up from 30.5 billion the previous year—an 80.92% year-over-year increase. In contrast, the top 10 search engines saw a marginal decline from 1872.5 billion visits to 1863.0 billion, a 0.51% drop, totaling a loss of 9.57 billion visits.
While chatbot usage is growing rapidly, the scale still pales in comparison to search engines. Even with this growth, chatbot traffic was only about 1/34th of search engine traffic over the past year.
This stark gap highlights that, despite gaining traction, chatbots have not yet emerged as a direct substitute for traditional search at a macro level.
To understand the usage intensity, we compared average daily and monthly visits across both categories for March 2025:
This breakdown reinforces the gap in user behavior. On any given day, users interact with search engines nearly 24 times more than they do with chatbots. While chatbot platforms are becoming part of users’ daily routines, search engines remain deeply embedded in how people find information online.
Zooming in on the two leaders—Google and ChatGPT—gives us further perspective on the current landscape:
Note: Total visits reflect the 12-month period from April 2024 to March 2025. Average monthly visits are calculated based on the total visits divided by 12 months. Average daily visits are estimated by dividing the total visits for March 2025 by 30 days.
Despite ChatGPT’s massive growth and high engagement, it still receives approximately 26 times less daily traffic than Google. This further validates that while AI chatbots are gaining ground, they are currently complementing—not replacing—search engine behavior at scale.
To better understand usage dynamics, we examined the month-over-month (MoM) traffic trends for both search engines and AI chatbots over the past 24 months. Unlike yearly totals, which show aggregate growth or decline, MoM trends reveal seasonal shifts, adoption momentum, and recent user behavior changes.
This section breaks down how usage has evolved month to month, highlighting which platforms are gaining sustained traction—and when. While chatbot usage has steadily increased throughout the year, it’s also worth noting that search engines—despite a slight overall drop YoY—began recovering and trending upward from December 2024 through March 2025. This points to a more nuanced, non-linear relationship between chatbot adoption and search engine usage.
To visualize this evolving relationship, we mapped monthly visits side-by-side across both platform types. As shown below, search engines consistently drew over 150 billion visits per month, recovering from a mid-year dip. AI chatbots, while growing fast—from 3.1B in April to 7.0B in March—still operate at a much smaller scale.
Despite chatbots’ rapid rise, search engines attracted nearly 24 times more daily traffic in March 2025 and maintained a YoY lead with 1.86 trillion visits vs. 55.2 billion—a 34x gap. These trends highlight that AI chatbots are accelerating, but not yet replacing traditional search behavior.
AI chatbot usage showed consistent and accelerating growth across the last 12 months. From 3.1B visits in April 2024, traffic steadily increased almost every month, reaching a peak of 7.0B visits in March 2025—a 124.46% increase over the course of the year.
In contrast, the previous year (Apr 2023–Mar 2024) showed flat or modest growth, with monthly visits hovering between 2.1B and 2.9B. The inflection point appears around September 2024, after which usage spiked sharply—likely coinciding with broader AI model improvements and deeper integrations into browsers, apps, and search tools.
This trend suggests not just early adoption, but growing user dependence on chatbots as everyday tools for information retrieval, content generation, and productivity.
Key Insight: AI chatbots have shifted from “emerging tech” to mainstream utility, with sustained upward momentum throughout the last 6 months of data.
Search engine usage over the last 12 months (Apr 2024–Mar 2025) presents a more optimistic and dynamic picture than the overall YoY change suggests. While the full-year traffic shows a slight 0.51% decrease compared to the previous year, the month-by-month trend reveals a significant rebound starting from late 2024.
After reaching a low of 147.1B visits in June 2024, usage steadily climbed—peaking at 162.0B in October, followed by consistent gains from December through March 2025, which closed at 163.7B. While this March total doesn’t surpass the May 2023 peak of 168.3B, it does represent the highest monthly traffic in the most recent 12-month cycle—and a strong signal of recovery.
This late-year resurgence may signal a bounce-back driven by AI integration into traditional search platforms. As engines like Google and Bing roll out AI-enhanced features—such as generative results, smart summaries, and conversational interfaces—users may be rediscovering search with improved value.
Key Insight: Despite a modest annual decline, search engine usage is rebounding strongly, possibly fueled by the increasing adoption of AI within the platforms themselves. Rather than being replaced by chatbots, search engines appear to be evolving to meet users’ changing expectations.
In this section, we zoom into the top 10 AI chatbots and examine their year-over-year (YoY) growth from April 2023 to March 2025. With AI chatbots making a significant impact on how users engage with information online, it’s essential to analyze the performance of the leading platforms in this space. By providing detailed insights into their traffic growth, we aim to give a clearer understanding of which platforms are driving adoption and where their user bases are expanding.
As seen in the previous section, AI chatbots have been gaining momentum over the past year, with platforms like ChatGPT taking the lead. Now, we will break down the performance of the top 10 chatbots, showcasing each tool’s YoY traffic and their share of the overall market.
This section will highlight how each platform has evolved, which platforms are gaining the most traction, and how they are performing in relation to one another.
The visual above is an essential overview of the top 10 AI chatbots by their total visits, comparing data from April 2023 to March 2024 with April 2024 to March 2025. The chart provides a clear comparison of the total traffic growth of each platform, allowing us to easily spot the leaders and those emerging within the space.
In this comparison, ChatGPT continues to dominate, seeing a massive increase in total visits, reaching 47.7 billion visits for the period from April 2024 to March 2025, a significant jump from 28.5 billion in the previous year. However, we also see that smaller players such as DeepSeek, Gemini, and Perplexity are experiencing notable growth, with DeepSeek showcasing an astonishing 113007% increase in traffic.
The pie chart provides a quick snapshot of the market share distribution among these top tools, with ChatGPT capturing a substantial 86.32% of the total visits. This leaves the remaining platforms with a smaller, but still growing, share of the market.
These insights give us a clear view of the overall chatbot landscape and set the stage for a deeper dive into the individual performance of each platform in the upcoming sections, where we will explore their specific growth, usage patterns, and trends.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
ChatGPT saw a remarkable surge in traffic, reaching 47.7 billion visits, a 67.09% increase compared to the previous year’s 28.5 billion. This reflects its continued dominance in the AI chatbot space.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
On average, ChatGPT attracted 4.0 billion visits per month over the past year, a significant boost from the previous 12-month period.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
The platform’s average daily visits reached 185.2 million in March 2025, demonstrating strong daily user engagement.
Month-over-Month Growth:
The MoM growth trend reveals a consistent upward trajectory, with March 2025 hitting 5.6 billion visits—a significant rise from April 2023’s 2.3 billion visits. This increase underscores ChatGPT’s expanding user base and its ongoing improvements.
Key Insight:
ChatGPT’s momentum shows no signs of slowing. With an average of 185.2 million daily visits in March 2025—more than the combined daily traffic of several other top chatbots—its dominance remains unmatched. This continued growth aligns with OpenAI’s consistent product evolution, including the rollout of GPT-4.1 and native integration into workflows like coding, browsing, and image generation. The platform’s ability to blend cutting-edge capabilities with everyday usability keeps it at the forefront of the AI chatbot space.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
DeepSeek experienced a staggering surge in traffic, with total visits jumping from 1.5M in April 2023–March 2024 to 1.7B in the latest period, marking an astonishing 113007% growth.
Average Monthly Visits:
In the latest year, DeepSeek averaged around 144.9M visits per month, a sharp rise from 0.2K in May 2023, reflecting its rapid adoption and the expanding user base.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
By March 2025, DeepSeek achieved 21.6M visits per day, highlighting its increasing presence and user engagement.
Month-over-Month Change:
The MoM data reveals the massive jump in DeepSeek’s usage, especially from December 2024, when it jumped from 12.6M visits to over 792.6M by February 2025, driven by improved capabilities and stronger user interest.
Key Insight:
Despite an 18% month-over-month drop in visits in March 2025, DeepSeek maintains its position as a formidable player in the AI landscape. The release of its upgraded model, DeepSeek-V3-0324, has intensified competition with industry leaders like OpenAI, showcasing significant improvements in reasoning and coding capabilities . This open-source approach, combined with cost-effective operations, positions DeepSeek for a strong rebound in user engagement in the coming months.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Gemini recorded 1.7 billion visits in the past 12 months, up from 1.2 billion the previous year—reflecting a 41.28% YoY growth.
Average Monthly Visits:
In the latest year, Gemini averaged 141 million visits per month, showing strong usage but with signs of leveling out in the second half of the year.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
By March, Gemini reached 5.1 million visits per day, with notable recovery after a dip in January.
Month-over-Month Trend:
The year began with a peak in May 2024 (178.9M visits) but saw a gradual decline through the summer. After reaching a low in January (118.1M), usage began to rebound—ending strong in March with 154.3M visits. While Gemini started hot, its momentum cooled mid-year before stabilizing.
Key Insight:
Despite Google’s substantial investments and the introduction of advanced features like Gemini Live and Veo 2, Gemini’s user engagement has plateaued, averaging around 141 million monthly visits over the past year.
This stability suggests that, while Gemini offers innovative tools, it hasn’t significantly expanded its user base compared to competitors like ChatGPT. Factors such as limited global availability and integration within existing apps may contribute to this trend, indicating a need for strategic adjustments to enhance user adoption.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Perplexity grew from 388.5 million to 1.3 billion visits, achieving a 243.74% YoY increase—making it one of the fastest-growing platforms among the top 10.
Average Monthly Visits:
With a monthly average of 111.3 million visits, Perplexity is clearly gaining traction among users looking for fast, source-cited answers.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March 2025, Perplexity hit 5.8 million daily visits, its highest performance to date.
Month-over-Month Trend:
The platform’s growth was consistent throughout the year. From 55.9M visits in April 2024, usage steadily climbed to 174.1M in March 2025. A slight dip between November and January was followed by a strong Q1 rebound.
Key Insight:
Perplexity’s growth has been steady but measured. In March 2025, the platform recorded 174.1 million visits, reflecting a 5% month-over-month increase. While this indicates consistent user engagement, the pace is more gradual compared to the rapid surges seen by competitors like Grok and DeepSeek.
However, Perplexity’s strategic initiatives, such as its integration into Motorola’s upcoming Razr and potential collaborations with Samsung, signal a concerted effort to expand its user base and enhance accessibility. These developments suggest that, although Perplexity’s adoption curve is currently moderate, its commitment to innovation and strategic partnerships positions it for accelerated growth in the near future.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Claude’s traffic soared to 1.2 billion visits, up from 240.1 million the year before—a 383.44% year-over-year increase, making it one of the standout risers in the chatbot space.
Average Monthly Visits:
Over the latest 12 months, Claude averaged 96.7 million visits per month, demonstrating growing user trust and adoption.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March, Claude recorded 4.3 million visits per day, ending the year on a high note with its strongest monthly performance yet.
Month-over-Month Trend:
Claude’s traffic climbed steadily from 58.8M in April 2024 to 128.9M by March 2025. After some fluctuations between October and February, the tool regained momentum, finishing the year with a clear upward trajectory.
Key Insight:
Claude’s growth trajectory has been steady, with over 15% month-over-month increase in visits as of March 2025 . While this indicates consistent user engagement, the pace is more gradual compared to the rapid surges seen by competitors like Grok and DeepSeek.
Recent enhancements, such as the introduction of the Claude 3.7 Sonnet model with hybrid reasoning capabilities and integration with Google Workspace, aim to bolster its utility in professional settings . Additionally, the upcoming voice-enabled feature is poised to enhance user interaction . These developments suggest that, although Claude’s adoption curve is currently moderate, its commitment to innovation and strategic partnerships positions it for accelerated growth in the near future.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Microsoft Copilot surged to 920.4 million visits, a massive leap from just 80.8 million the year before—marking a 1038.72% YoY growth.
Average Monthly Visits:
The platform averaged 76.7 million monthly visits over the last 12 months, propelled by deeper integration into Microsoft 365 and Windows environments.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
Copilot reached 3.8 million daily visits in March, signaling steady user adoption and embedded usage.
Month-over-Month Trend:
Traffic spiked sharply starting in October 2024, rising from 46.7M in September to a peak of 123.8M in November. Although usage dipped slightly through early 2025, it rebounded to 114.3M by March—a strong close to the year.
Key Insight:
Microsoft Copilot has demonstrated significant growth, with a 1038.72% increase in user adoption over the past year. In March 2025, the platform recorded 114.3 million visits, reflecting a 15.57% month-over-month increase.
Recent enhancements, such as the introduction of Copilot Vision, which allows users to interact with on-screen content in the Edge browser through voice commands, and the Copilot Studio’s computer use feature, enabling AI agents to interact directly with websites and desktop applications, have further solidified its position in the AI landscape.
These developments, combined with strategic initiatives like tailoring services for local businesses, underscore Microsoft Copilot’s commitment to broadening its appeal and utility across diverse user segments.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Blackbox AI reached 221.5 million visits, up from 39.5 million in the previous year—a 461.38% year-over-year increase.
Average Monthly Visits:
The platform averaged 18.5 million visits per month, a healthy indicator of its growing user base among programmers and technical users.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
By March 2025, Blackbox AI was recording 878,000 daily visits, continuing its steady upward trend.
Month-over-Month Trend:
Visits grew consistently throughout the year—from 10.5M in April to 26.3M in March 2025, with momentum accelerating notably from September onward. Unlike some others, Blackbox AI maintained stable engagement through early 2025 without major dips.
Key Insight:
While not a traditional chatbot, Blackbox AI stands out as a developer-first coding assistant with chatbot-like functionality tailored to programming tasks. Its sharp traffic growth reflects growing demand for niche, productivity-enhancing tools in software development. Unlike broad-purpose AI chatbots, Blackbox focuses on real-time code generation, debugging, and IDE integration—making it a go-to tool for engineers rather than everyday users.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Grok experienced a dramatic rise in traffic, reaching 216.5 million visits, a staggering 353,787.60% YoY growth from just 61,200 the previous year.
Average Monthly Visits:
Averaging 18 million visits per month, Grok’s surge is primarily attributed to its rapid adoption in the final quarter of the year.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March, Grok achieved 5.3 million daily visits, surpassing established platforms like Gemini, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot.
Month-over-Month Trend:
After minimal activity for most of the year, Grok’s traffic exploded from 1.7 million in January to 160 million in March 2025, marking one of the fastest MoM rises among AI chatbots.
Key Insight:
Grok’s explosive growth is fueled by the release of Grok-3, which boasts advanced reasoning capabilities and outperforms competitors like GPT-4o and Gemini 2 Pro in benchmarks such as MMLU Pro and Human Eval . With features like “Big Brain” reasoning mode and a new memory function for personalized interactions , Grok is poised to become the third most popular AI tool, following ChatGPT and DeepSeek, if its current momentum continues.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Monica saw its yearly visits grow to 164.5 million, up from 49.9 million the year prior—a 229.83% YoY increase.
Average Monthly Visits:
With an average of 13.7 million monthly visits, Monica has shown reliable user engagement, particularly among productivity-focused users.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March, Monica recorded 671,800 daily visits, closing the year with its highest monthly total to date at 20.2 million.
Month-over-Month Trend:
Visits fluctuated throughout the year but showed an overall upward trend—from 8.1M in April 2024 to 20.2M in March 2025. Despite some mid-year dips, momentum picked up again from January onward.
Key Insight:
Monica distinguishes itself by integrating multiple leading AI models—such as GPT-4o, Claude 3.7, DeepSeek V3, and Gemini 2.0—into a single platform, catering to users who seek the flexibility of switching between models for tasks like coding, design, and writing. While it doesn’t develop its own large language models, Monica’s strength lies in providing a unified interface that simplifies access to diverse AI capabilities.
This approach appeals to professionals aiming to streamline their workflows without juggling multiple subscriptions or platforms. As the demand for versatile AI tools grows, Monica’s model-agnostic strategy positions it as a valuable resource for users prioritizing convenience and adaptability in their AI interactions.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Meta AI reached 108.9 million visits, up from just 76,400 the year before—an enormous 142,430% YoY growth, though still the smallest among the top 10 in total volume.
Average Monthly Visits:
The platform averaged 9.1 million monthly visits, reflecting a modest but growing user base across Meta’s ecosystem.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March, Meta AI recorded 407,000 daily visits, maintaining consistent performance since December.
Month-over-Month Trend:
Visits rose from 5.8M in April to 12.2M in March, with some fluctuation mid-year but overall upward momentum—particularly between November and January when it reached its peak of 12.5M.
Key Insight:
Despite Meta’s robust infrastructure and the release of its powerful open-source LLaMA models, Meta AI’s user engagement remains modest. This is attributed to its limited global availability—recently expanding to 41 European countries with certain feature restrictions—and its integration within existing apps, which may lead to less intentional user interactions.
In contrast, platforms like DeepSeek have achieved significant global traction by offering competitive, open-source models with broader accessibility, highlighting the impact of strategic deployment and user-centric design on adoption rates.
In this section, we shift our focus to the top 10 search engines and their year-over-year (YoY) performance from April 2023 to March 2025. While AI chatbots are gaining traction, traditional search engines still dominate the web traffic landscape—and understanding their usage trends provides crucial context in the broader conversation about search behavior evolution.
It’s worth noting that many of these platforms—especially Google, Bing, and others—have already embedded AI features into their core search experiences, including AI-generated summaries, interactive overviews, and conversational modes. However, for the purpose of this study, we are classifying these platforms as search engines, as their primary function still revolves around indexing, ranking, and returning websites based on user queries, unlike chatbots, which generate direct responses in natural language without link-based results as the default.
The bar chart above compares the total number of visits to each major search engine over the past two years, offering a side-by-side view of traffic changes between April 2023–March 2024 and April 2024–March 2025. Unsurprisingly, Google remains the undisputed leader, drawing in 1,631.5 billion visits this past year, accounting for 87.57% of total search engine traffic. Despite a slight decline of 1.41% YoY, its dominance remains nearly unshaken.
The pie chart provides a visual breakdown of market share by platform, reinforcing Google’s overwhelming share, while also highlighting the modest gains of a few challengers. Microsoft Bing, Yandex, and Naver saw the most notable YoY growth, with Bing increasing traffic by 27.77%, Yandex by 32.65%, and Naver by 34.28%, indicating user expansion in their respective geographies.
At the same time, several platforms saw traffic contractions—most notably Yahoo with a -22.5% decline and DuckDuckGo with -8.77%, suggesting shifting user preferences or reduced market relevance.
Overall, this section sets the stage for our deep dive into each platform’s performance, where we’ll explore what’s fueling the growth of rising players—and what’s contributing to the decline of others.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Google received 1.63 trillion visits, down slightly by 1.41% from 1.65 trillion the previous year. Despite this dip, it remains the most visited website globally.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Google averaged 136.0 billion visits per month, reinforcing its consistent dominance as the default gateway for web search.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
With 4.7 billion daily visits in March 2025, Google maintained an overwhelming lead compared to any AI chatbot or other search engine.
Month-over-Month Growth:
The monthly trend shows a rebound beginning in October 2024, with traffic steadily increasing each month, culminating at 142.2 billion visits in March 2025. This upward swing helped offset the earlier dip observed between April and August.
Key Insight:
Google continues to dominate the global search landscape with over 4.7 billion daily visits, despite a slight YoY drop. Its resurgence since late 2024 aligns with expanding AI-driven features like AI Overviews, Search Generative Experience (SGE), and tighter Gemini integration across products. These updates may have helped stabilize and even boost engagement, reaffirming Google’s unmatched hold on the search ecosystem—even in an increasingly AI-first era.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Microsoft Bing reached 60.1 billion visits, marking a 27.77% increase from 47.0 billion in the previous year—its highest YoY growth among the major traditional search engines.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Bing averaged 5.0 billion monthly visits over the past year, steadily climbing month over month.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March 2025, Bing recorded 225.7 million daily visits, showcasing significant daily user engagement.
Month-over-Month Growth:
Traffic rose consistently throughout the year, starting at 3.5B in April and climbing to 6.8B by March 2025. This is almost double the traffic from a year earlier and indicates a clear upward adoption trend.
Key Insight:
Microsoft Bing’s growth trajectory reflects the ongoing impact of its AI-first approach, integrating GPT-powered responses and deep Copilot integration across Microsoft 365. With 225.7 million daily visits in March, Bing is redefining its role in the search market—not just catching up, but actively converting users through a differentiated, AI-enhanced experience.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Yandex recorded 41.5 billion visits in the latest 12-month period, up from 31.3 billion a year earlier—an impressive 32.65% year-over-year increase.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
The platform saw an average of 3.5 billion monthly visits, showing steady performance with a few noticeable spikes.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
Yandex closed March 2025 with 123.7 million daily visits, reflecting healthy engagement across its core markets.
Month-over-Month Growth:
Visits peaked at 5.4 billion in October 2024, likely driven by temporary boosts in user behavior or product changes. Despite the spike, traffic stabilized above 3.7B in recent months, maintaining a higher base than the previous year.
Key Insight:
Yandex’s growth reflects strong regional loyalty and resilience in a shifting global search landscape. Despite limited international traction, its dominance in Russian-speaking regions and product integrations—including AI-driven tools like neural search—continue to solidify its relevance. With a consistent MoM base above 3.7B in recent months, Yandex is quietly sustaining its market presence amid global giants.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Yahoo recorded 41.3 billion visits, down from 53.2 billion the previous year—a 22.5% decline YoY, marking one of the steepest drops among the top 10 search engines.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Its average monthly visits stood at 3.4 billion, significantly lower than the prior 12-month period.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
Yahoo closed March with 103.2 million daily visits, continuing a slow but steady decline seen throughout the year.
Month-over-Month Growth:
The traffic trend shows a consistent downward trajectory. From April 2024’s 3.6B visits to just 3.1B in March 2025, Yahoo has steadily lost momentum without any substantial recovery month.
Key Insight:
Yahoo’s continuous decline in visits, with a 22.5% YoY decrease, highlights its struggle to remain competitive in the rapidly evolving AI-driven search engine landscape. Unlike Google and Microsoft Bing, which have successfully integrated AI features into their core search experiences, Yahoo has been slow to adopt these advancements.
Google’s slight decline in visits can be attributed to its AI-powered features such as AI-generated summaries, conversational search, and enhanced search results, allowing it to bounce back and retain user interest. Microsoft Bing, after embracing AI integrations through its partnership with OpenAI, has seen steady growth in its search engine market share.
On the other hand, Yahoo’s inability to adopt AI at a fast pace has left it struggling to keep up, and this is reflected in its traffic loss. As of March 2025, Yahoo’s visits have fallen consistently month after month, signaling a loss of public interest.
If Yahoo doesn’t act swiftly and incorporate AI-driven features, it risks losing even more market share in the coming months. The search engine market is rapidly evolving, and the lack of visible innovation from Yahoo could result in it being left behind by both users and the industry at large. As AI continues to revolutionize search experiences, platforms that fail to adapt—like Yahoo—could become less relevant, especially as competitors outpace them.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
DuckDuckGo recorded a total of 37.0 billion visits, experiencing an 8.77% decrease compared to the previous year’s 40.5 billion visits. Despite this decline, DuckDuckGo remains a prominent player in the search engine space, largely due to its focus on privacy.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
The platform maintained an average of 3.1 billion visits per month, continuing to be a top choice for privacy-conscious users. However, its growth has stagnated compared to other search engines, signaling the need for a stronger push in innovation to capture more users.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March 2025, DuckDuckGo recorded 105.5 million visits per day, showing steady engagement, although it lags behind competitors like Microsoft Bing and Yandex, which have seen consistent growth.
Month-over-Month Growth:
While DuckDuckGo experienced fluctuations in its monthly visits, the overall trend indicates a relatively stable user base despite the market’s rapid growth. In March 2025, DuckDuckGo saw a modest increase in traffic, reaching 3.2 billion visits, a slight uptick compared to the same time last year. This growth, though small, signals some recovery after a period of decline.
Key Insight:
DuckDuckGo has integrated AI capabilities into its search engine with the introduction of Duck.AI, powered by GPT-4, aiming to enhance user experience with smarter, more personalized results. Despite these advancements, DuckDuckGo has continued to see a slight decline in total visits year-over-year, which contrasts with the growth seen in major search engines like Google and Bing.
Interestingly, March 2025 saw a modest uptick in visits, reaching 3.2 billion, a slight increase from the same period in the previous year. This indicates that while DuckDuckGo is retaining its core audience with its privacy-first approach and AI-driven features, the overall growth is not on par with its competitors. As the AI-driven search landscape rapidly evolves, platforms like Google and Microsoft Bing continue to lead, largely due to their deeper integration of AI across services.
Despite its strong privacy focus and recent AI enhancements, DuckDuckGo’s stagnation may be attributed to a broader market preference for the powerful search capabilities of Google and the seamless integration of AI in Microsoft Bing. For DuckDuckGo to maintain and grow its market share, it will need to accelerate its AI innovations and adopt more aggressive marketing and engagement strategies to stay competitive.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Naver registered 24.1 billion visits in total, marking a 34.28% growth compared to the previous period (17.9 billion visits). This indicates significant expansion for Naver as it continues to build on its search engine presence.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
On average, Naver attracted 2.0 billion visits per month, a notable increase compared to the previous year’s monthly visits, highlighting its consistent and growing user base.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
Naver’s average daily visits reached 69.9 million in March 2025, reinforcing its solid position in the search engine market, with a steady daily user engagement.
Month-over-Month Growth:
The month-over-month trend shows Naver’s resurgence from a low point in October and November 2024, where visits were at 1.5 billion per month. However, from December 2024 onward, Naver’s traffic steadily increased, with a notable spike in February 2025, showing promising growth trajectory.
Key Insight:
Naver has demonstrated substantial year-over-year growth, with a 34.28% increase in visits. Despite facing challenges from global search giants, the platform is gaining traction and emerging as a competitive force.
Their sustained growth and daily engagement signal that Naver’s enhancements in AI and search algorithms are resonating well with users, especially in the East Asian markets. However, it must continue evolving to keep up with global leaders to further cement its place in the search engine ecosystem.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Baidu saw a drop in total visits, reaching 16.7 billion visits—a decrease of 13.71% from 19.4 billion the previous year. Despite this decline, Baidu continues to be a prominent player in China’s search engine market.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Baidu averaged 1.4 billion visits per month, reflecting a reduction in user engagement when compared to the previous year.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March 2025, Baidu’s average daily visits stood at 49.3 million. While this number is significant, it represents a decline from previous months.
Month-over-Month Growth:
The month-over-month analysis shows a decline in visits, but there was a slight uptick in February and March 2025. This rebound can be attributed to Baidu’s integration of DeepSeek’s AI technology, marking a significant shift in its search engine experience.
Key Insight:
Baidu has been actively integrating AI into its search engine, especially through the addition of DeepSeek’s AI models, which includes the DeepSeek R1, alongside its proprietary Ernie models. This integration, which began with grayscale testing in February 2025, is Baidu’s response to growing competition, especially from global players like Google and Microsoft Bing.
While Baidu had been slow to adopt AI advancements compared to others, the recent AI integration appears to have boosted its performance, contributing to the uptick in visits observed in February and March 2025. The data suggests that Baidu’s moves to enhance its search capabilities with DeepSeek have helped stabilize its traffic decline, especially with its stronghold in China.
However, despite these improvements, Baidu still faces challenges from both domestic and international competitors. The true test will be whether these AI-driven updates can sustain long-term growth and whether they can effectively capture a more significant share of global search engine traffic.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Ecosia saw a total of 4.3 billion visits during the period from April 2024 to March 2025, marking a year-over-year (YoY) increase of 17.79%. This growth comes despite the volatile trends in the months leading up to the latest period, where their visits had fluctuated before reaching a steady uptick.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Ecosia averaged 360.3 million visits per month in the year 2024-2025. This consistency shows that Ecosia is solidifying its user base, which has been steadily increasing despite competition from larger search engines.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
With 13 million visits per day in March 2025, Ecosia continues to capture a niche yet loyal following, primarily driven by its environmental focus—users are often drawn by its promise of using search revenue for tree planting initiatives.
Month-over-Month Growth:
Ecosia’s monthly growth saw noticeable fluctuations, but with a clear upward trend in the latter half of the analyzed period, particularly starting from November 2024. Despite a dip in some months, February and March 2025 witnessed a sharp rise in traffic, reaching 391.3 million visits.
Key Insight:
Ecosia’s growth remains steady, with a significant uptick in late 2024 and early 2025. This rise could be attributed to its growing brand presence and environmental mission, which resonates with a strong user base that is eco-conscious.
Additionally, the steady improvement in their traffic despite the dip seen in late 2024 shows their consistent appeal. Their integration of AI into their search experience and sustained focus on user engagement contributes to their growing footprint in the competitive search engine market. Ecosia’s vision continues to attract more environmentally-focused users, keeping it as a noteworthy alternative search engine.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
Brave Search saw a substantial increase in total visits, reaching 3.8 billion visits, representing a remarkable 64.20% YoY growth from the previous year’s 2.3 billion. This indicates significant user adoption, fueled by Brave’s growing reputation for privacy-focused search.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
On average, Brave Search attracted 317.7 million visits per month, reflecting a steady rise in monthly traffic compared to its earlier months.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March 2025, Brave Search had 14.4 million visits daily, a clear signal of its increasing user engagement. Despite being a smaller player in the search engine market, its traffic growth shows the growing interest in privacy-driven alternatives.
Month-over-Month Growth:
The MoM growth pattern indicates a sharp upward trajectory starting from January 2025, when Brave Search saw a major jump to 476.7 million visits. This spike is linked to a combination of increased market awareness and growing user interest in privacy-focused search engines.
Key Insight:
Brave Search’s impressive 64.20% YoY growth and strong recent performance highlight its emergence as a key player in the search engine market. This growth is particularly noteworthy as it stands in contrast to the stagnation observed in traditional search engines.
Brave’s emphasis on privacy continues to resonate with users, as indicated by its consistent rise in both visits and user engagement. The uptick in January 2025 is particularly significant, likely driven by the platform’s increasing visibility and its differentiation from Google and Bing with a privacy-first model. If Brave continues to leverage this unique value proposition, its share in the search engine market could grow further, even amidst fierce competition from tech giants.
Total Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
AOL has shown a steady recovery, with a total of 2.7 billion visits, marking a 13.07% increase from the previous year. This signals a return to growth after a challenging period.
Average Monthly Visits (Apr 2024–Mar 2025):
On average, AOL attracted 225.2 million visits per month, indicating its slow but consistent progress in the search engine market.
Average Daily Visits (March 2025):
In March 2025, AOL recorded 9.3 million daily visits, which highlights its growing engagement, albeit on a smaller scale compared to industry giants.
Month-over-Month Growth:
The MoM trend shows a positive shift, particularly from December 2024, with a sharp increase in visits observed in early 2025. By March 2025, AOL had surged to 278.3 million visits, a clear sign of rebound.
Key Insight:
AOL is seeing positive growth in visits, with a significant uptick in early 2025, but it remains limited by its lack of AI integration. While the company focuses on generating stable revenue through digital ads and subscriptions, its search function, powered by Bing, remains traditional and lacks advanced AI features.
In an era where AI-driven search and content platforms are becoming increasingly prevalent, AOL’s minimal investment in AI is a risk. Without adopting AI technologies to enhance user experience, AOL might struggle to stay relevant as competitors like Google and Microsoft continue to innovate and dominate the search landscape.
To bring more clarity to this evolving landscape, we reached out to respected SEO leaders and practitioners for their take on the core question: Are AI chatbots replacing traditional search engines?
Their insights help unpack how AI is influencing user behavior, what role search engines continue to play, and how SEOs should adapt. Here’s what they had to say.
This study underscores a pivotal shift in digital behavior. While AI chatbots offer immediacy and conversational convenience, traditional search engines remain indispensable for comprehensive information retrieval. At Hennessey Digital, we’ve observed that users often initiate queries with chatbots but turn to search engines for in-depth exploration and validation.
This duality presents an opportunity: integrating AI’s responsiveness with search engines’ depth could redefine user engagement. For digital marketers, the takeaway is clear, embracing a hybrid approach that leverages both AI chatbots and search engine optimization will be key to staying ahead in the evolving digital landscape.
This gap isn’t surprising. Google still has the built-in market share to compete with whatever first mover advantage ChatGPT had. That said, it would be foolish to ignore ChatGPT for that reason. Marketers need to embrace the new mindset shift in 2025. Rather than optimizing for individual traffic channels or chatbots, optimize for customers. Create content that would make sense for a brand even if Google or Chatbots didn’t exist.
AI chatbots aren’t replacing search, they’re converging with it. Every major platform that SEOs should prioritize is evolving into a unified “research engine” that blends large language models, traditional search, and knowledge graphs to deliver richer, more contextual results. Pure chatbots without real-time search integration aren’t compelling SEO targets – they’re out of date by design; the real opportunity lies in engines that combine conversational interfaces with live, verifiable information that drives users deeper into the decision journey. As an SEO, focus on Google Search, Bing Search, ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot, Perplexity, Google Gemini.
I don’t think Ai Chatbots are replacing search engines – they are redefining the term (which can seem scary to some people). It’s natural for tech to evolve, and that’s what we see here. Sure, some industries will suffer or benefit, but Google isn’t dying, and neither is SEO 🙂
Chatbots aren’t taking over completely, but they’re definitely shifting how people find local businesses early on.
Google still owns those urgent “plumber near me” searches, but when someone’s just browsing for a new coffee spot? That’s where AI is stepping in.If your business isn’t in those high-quality sources AI pulls from, you might get overlooked. Get featured in local roundups, use structured data, keep your Google profile fresh, and encourage customer reviews.
It’s not just about showing up on maps anymore – it’s about being mentioned where AI is looking!
“The study shows AI is speeding up the evolution of Google and conventional search; not its death. The fact that Google has recovered in recent months with AI overviews leads to 1 main conclusion; AI integration will be table stakes going forward; not an optional bonus feature.
I can see the lines continuing to blur between search engines and chatbots. For example, more conversational features within Google search results. That way, the user will get the best of both conversational AI and the traditional search results in the 1 place.”
This is easily one of the most in-depth studies I’ve seen on the topic, and I appreciate the amount of effort that went into it.
What’s happening in SEO and AI is a concern for most in the traditional SEO sphere, but it’s important to see that, at least for now, the traffic traditional search can provide is still absolutely huge. I think AI Chatbots can provide superior traffic in general, but the quantity at the moment pales in comparison.
The most interesting thing to me about a study like this one is not what I’m reading now, but what you can learn from regular monthly updates on the latest numbers. There’s an expectation that one number will keep declining and one will keep increasing, so the rate of each should be pretty fascinating.
Going forward, it would be cool to see data from the likes of Similarweb as well, just to see how they compared to third-party estimates from elsewhere.
AI Chatbots/ LLMS are not replacing search yet. But, we need to really appreciate the numbers here. 34x does not seem like a large amount, but when you take into account that in a percentages it equals 3,400% more people are using Search engines vs chatbots/ LLMS.
The % better defines the gap between people using search engines vs AI Chatbots/ LLMS. That being said, need to pay attention to showing up on AI engines because it will only get bigger and it’s not going away any time soon.
Since ChatGPT’s late-2022 launch, AI chatbots have soared but haven’t replaced search engines or killed SEO. Clients still ask, “How do I rank in Google?” Chatbots learn from Google and Bing crawls, so search engines stay core. To show up in AI or search, you need a crawlable site, relevant content, and strong authority—the same SEO basics. I don’t see chatbots taking over; they’re just another surface like maps or video. So no, AI chatbots aren’t replacing search engines.
After analyzing two years of web traffic data and trends across the top 10 AI chatbots and top 10 search engines, the conclusion is clear: AI chatbots are not replacing traditional search engines—but they are reshaping how users interact with information online.
The study revealed that while AI chatbots like ChatGPT and DeepSeek are experiencing explosive growth, their traffic still lags far behind search engines, with chatbot traffic accounting for only 1/34th of search engine traffic. Despite a 0.51% YoY decline in search engine visits, platforms like Google and Microsoft Bing are recovering and adapting with AI-driven features like AI Overviews, Search Generative Experience (SGE), and conversational search—leading to a steady increase in visits in early 2025.
While Generation Z and younger users are driving the adoption of AI chatbots for conversational queries, older generations continue to rely on traditional search engines for comprehensive information retrieval. This demographic divide suggests that chatbots and search engines will coexist, each serving distinct user needs. Moreover, AI features in search engines are keeping them relevant, ensuring they remain essential tools for everyday users.
In essence, search engines are evolving rather than fading, integrating AI tools to offer a richer, more personalized user experience. At the same time, chatbots are carving out their niche in tasks requiring direct, personalized responses.
Key Takeaway: Search engines and AI chatbots are not in competition for supremacy—they are evolving together, with each platform enhancing the other’s value. SEO professionals and content creators should embrace this hybrid approach, as the future of search will involve AI-powered tools from both categories, ensuring continued relevance for search engines in the era of AI.
To investigate the evolving relationship between AI chatbots and traditional search engines, we conducted a comparative analysis of global web traffic trends across both categories over a 24-month period—from April 2023 to March 2025.
Our goal was to determine whether the increasing popularity of AI chatbots is leading to a decline in search engine usage, and to what extent these two technologies are reshaping user behavior on the web.
– How We Selected the top 10 AI Chatbots
We identified the top 50 AI chatbots using publicly available traffic data from AITools.xyz/popular-ai-tools, a well-known aggregator that ranks AI tools based on their popularity and monthly usage. From this list, we selected the top 10 chatbots by total visits in March 2025 for our analysis. These top 10 platforms—led by tools such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Perplexity—collectively represent the overwhelming majority of traffic within the AI chatbot sector.
– How We Selected the top 10 Search Engines
To identify the leading search engines, we referred to multiple credible sources, including:
We shortlisted 20 search engines and then selected the top 10 based on total web traffic, using Semrush data for March 2025. These platforms—such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex—account for the vast majority of global search engine usage.
By analyzing the top 10 platforms in each category, we aimed to cover what we estimate to be over 95% of total web usage across both AI chatbots and search engines. While this does not represent every platform in the ecosystem, the selected platforms provide a reliable and statistically significant view of overall industry usage, allowing us to uncover key trends and shifts.
We tracked:
All traffic estimates were collected using Semrush, a widely trusted digital analytics platform known for its accuracy in web visit tracking. For each platform, we collected:
It is important to note that only web traffic was considered. Mobile app usage was excluded due to unavailability of reliable, unified cross-platform data. However, given the scale of web usage, the data remains significant and directional enough to draw robust conclusions.
Many platforms operate across geographically segmented domains (e.g., google.de, google.co.uk). To maintain consistency, we focused exclusively on the .com domain for each platform (except Yandex, for which yandex.ru was considered as its primary domain). While this approach excludes regional subdomains, we found that the main domain typically accounts for the bulk of global usage and is widely used in international tracking and reporting.
In the case of platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini that transitioned from previous domains (e.g., Bard to Gemini), we carefully tracked historical traffic under their earlier URLs until the point of migration, ensuring that traffic patterns remained consistent and comparable over time.
While we believe the dataset provides an accurate macro view of web behavior, there are inherent limitations:
Estimated Metrics: All traffic figures are estimates from Semrush. Although Semrush is widely recognized for its data reliability, exact visit counts may vary slightly from proprietary internal analytics.
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