- From April 2024 to March 2025, AI chatbots reached 55.2b visits, representing a remarkable year-over-year increase of 80.92%. In stark contrast, search engines witnessed a marginal annual decline of 0.51%, with total visits decreasing slightly to 1.86tr over the same period.
- Despite the impressive percentage growth in chatbot traffic, it only accounted for 2.96 per cent of the total visits garnered by search engines, equating to 34 times fewer visits.
- ChatGPT leads the AI chatbot sector, commanding an 86.32% share while Google retains an even more dominant position in the search engine domain, holding 87.57% market share, followed by Microsoft Bing and Yandex.
Two years ago, querying Google was instinctive; today, tens of billions of users increasingly turn to AI chatbots—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, among others—for instantaneous, conversational answers. These platforms dispense with traditional search rituals, eliminating the need to scroll through pages of links and click on multiple sources.
The paradigm shift has ignited intense debate within the digital community, raising a critical question: Are AI chatbots quietly usurping the dominance of classic search engines?
For search engine optimisation (SEO) professionals, content creators, and digital marketers, this inquiry transcends theoretical discourse. Its answer bears existential implications for their craft, which depends heavily on organic search traffic as a primary conduit for audience engagement and revenue generation.
A downturn in search engine use could translate into fewer clicks, diminished readership, and ultimately, reduced client opportunities.
Addressing these concerns requires empirical analysis rather than speculation. A comprehensive study by OneLittleWeb, spanning two full years from April 2023 to March 2025, offers illuminating insights into this evolving landscape.
Utilising robust data from SEMrush and aitools.xyz, the study compares global web traffic metrics between the top ten search engines and the top ten AI chatbots.
Contrary to provocative narratives of an imminent AI takeover, the findings suggest that, despite AI chatbots’ impressive growth trajectory, traditional search engines continue to dominate user engagement by a substantial margin.
From April 2024 to March 2025, AI chatbots reached 55.2 billion visits, representing a remarkable year-over-year increase of 80.92 per cent. In stark contrast, search engines witnessed a marginal annual decline of 0.51 per cent, with total visits decreasing slightly to 1.86 trillion over the same period.
Statistics
Despite the impressive percentage growth in chatbot traffic, it only accounted for 2.96 per cent of the total visits garnered by search engines, equating to 34 times fewer visits.
On a daily basis, the disparity remains pronounced: search engines averaged 5.5 billion visits each day in March 2025, while chatbots attracted just 233.1 million, underscoring an almost 24-fold difference in user engagement.
The top 10 search engines experienced a slight decline, with visits dropping from 1,872.5 billion to 1,863.0 billion—a marginal decrease of 0.51 per cent, equating to a loss of 9.57 billion visits.
In contrast, AI chatbots exhibited remarkable growth, with traffic more than doubling from 3.1 billion visits in April 2024 to 7.0 billion in March 2025, representing a 124.46 per cent increase.
Despite this rapid expansion, chatbot usage remains relatively small, accounting for only about one-thirty-fourth of search engine traffic over the past year.
These statistics affirm that, although gaining momentum, AI chatbots have not yet displaced search engines as the primary means of accessing information online.
ChatGPT dominates
Market share data further reinforces this dynamic. ChatGPT overwhelmingly leads the AI chatbot sector, commanding an 86.32 per cent share. Meanwhile, Google retains an even more dominant position in the search engine domain, holding 87.57 per cent market share, followed by Microsoft Bing and Yandex.
Even with ChatGPT’s expansive growth, it attracts approximately 26 times fewer daily visits than Google. The remarkable growth rates of emerging AI chatbots like Grok and DeepSeek signify burgeoning competition and innovation within the AI space, yet their user numbers remain modest relative to established search engines.
Conversely, traditional platforms face challenges largely highlighted by Yahoo’s 22.5 per cent year-over-year decline, underscoring the potential risks for legacy engines in an AI-integrated search environment.
These dynamics suggest a digital landscape in flux but not a sweeping displacement. AI chatbots are carving out a significant niche as complementary tools that enhance convenience and conversational engagement.
However, the entrenched infrastructure, reliability, and comprehensiveness of search engines continue to secure their central role.
Gen Z adopts chatbots more
For SEO professionals and digital marketers, the market signals an imperative to adapt strategies, integrating AI chatbot optimisation alongside conventional search engine tactics to capture emerging patterns of user behaviour.
The disparity highlights that AI chatbots have not supplanted traditional search engines but are instead transforming user interaction with information.
A notable demographic divide underpins this trend: younger users, particularly Generation Z, are increasingly adopting AI chatbots for conversational queries, while older generations continue to depend on search engines for comprehensive information retrieval.
Furthermore, search engines are not stagnant; they are integrating AI features that enhance personalisation and relevance, thereby maintaining their indispensable role in everyday information access. In summary, the coexistence of AI chatbots and search engines reflects a complementary relationship.
Search engines evolve to deliver richer experiences, while chatbots specialise in direct, personalised responses, together reshaping the digital information landscape without direct replacement.