AI search vs. Google

The rate of adoption for new technologies is an important consideration for marketers and SEOs, which is why everyone is talking about the growth of AI search and generative engine optimization.

But exactly how much search traffic is going to LLMs?

That’s the goal of this report. Every month, we’ll track monthly changes in the use of AI search compared to Google search.

We’ll monitor:

• Traffic to AI search versus Google search

• Monthly active users on AI search versus Google search

• Market share and growth for different AI search tools

• Growth of ChatGPT

  
  

For the purpose of this research, I’ve defined “AI search” as a specific platform that someone visits in order to satisfy a query or complete a task. The technologies that fall into this category include:

• ChatGPT

• Gemini

• Claude

• Perplexity

• Copilot 

• Grok 

While Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode use Google Gemini to surface content, at time of publishing, we have limited ability to track direct use of these platforms as differentiated from Google’s classic search pages.

Data for this traffic has been assessed from SimilarWeb and looks at a worldwide audience.

Traffic to AI search versus Google search

Year on Year traffic to Google 

Google traffic is fairly stable, but it’s trending slightly downward with average global visits from the last 12 months coming in at 82.6 billion Still a lot.

But this data shows that YoY traffic to Google is down 1% overall and was relatively flat when we compare June to June. Again, this is a small percentage well within a margin of error, but it’s notable that Google’s YoY traffic has shown no growth in the last 12 months. 

Traffic to AI search grows monthly

By contrast, since the start of 2023, AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity had very little traffic in comparison to Google. 

But since July 2024, when SearchGPT was released, we see traffic from ChatGPT surge. The share of traffic to AI search tools has been increasing month on month since August 2024. Indeed, over the last 12 months, AI search has seen average monthly traffic increases of over 721%, growing from 2.8 billion visits in June 2024 to 6.9 billion in June 2025. 

In June 2025, AI search traffic accounted for 7.82% of search traffic. This is up from 7.66% search share in May 2025.

Monthly active users on AI search vs Google search

For June 2025, there were around 4.7x more Google users than AI search users. A year ago, in June 2024, the ratio of Google users to AI search users was 10:1.

When we look at trends regarding user base, we see a similar story for Google’s unique visitors as we do with traffic: fairly stable but trending downwards. 

Data suggests that year-on-year global unique visitors to Google declined by less than a percent in June 2025, coming in at around 3.1 billion. But if we compare this year to June 2023, visitors are down by over 4%, from 3.3 billion.

Meanwhile, year-on-year unique visitors for AI search have doubled from 337 million in June 2024 to 670 million in June 2025.

AI search tools by market share

ChatGPT continues to dominate the AI search market with a 78% market share in June 2025. ChatGPT has emerged as the market leader in AI search. With over 415 million users in June 2025.Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity saw growth in June. Undoubtedly bolstered by new model access updates and product rollouts following Google I/O, Gemini showed the highest month-over-month growth at 22.88%, reaching 649 million visits and 9% AI search market share. Claude’s visits increased by 4.8% and Perplexity was up 3%, inline with the standard trajectory of each platform.

Speaking of Deepseek, after making a big splash at the start of the year, visits to the Chinese reasoning model declined by 10%. Grok also saw a drop in visits of around 13%. Despite the reduction in visits, Deepseek continued to hold a respectable 5.6% market share. 

A deeper look at ChatGPT

ChatGPT has 7x more uses than the next six most used AI search tools combined. Understanding ChatGPT can help marketers to perform better across all AI search platforms. 

Between May 2025 and June 2025, visits to ChatGPT actually declined by 1.7% from 5.5 billion to 5.4 billion. But users increased by 1%, from 411 million to 415 million.These two metrics combine suggest that the link between visits and users has some nuance. June will have seen the bedding in of improved functionality from the rollout of the GPT 4.1 as the standard model all users in mid-May. With 12x larger the context window (ability to process information in queries) than the preceding model, it is possible that reduced visits and increased users are indicative of a more efficient experience. Time will tell if this is a consistent trend.

Three notable stats on ChatGPT for June 2025:

1. Users are desktop first: In June, 70% of ChatGPT’s global traffic came from desktop users. This is almost the complete reverse of Google, which is 60% mobile. And the ratio of desktop to mobile is not seasonal; this device distribution has been consistent across 2025.

2. They’re more international: Only 14% of ChatGPT’s audience is from the U.S., while Google’s U.S. audience makes up 19% of their traffic.

3. There are more branded searches: In June 2025, ChatGPT’s traffic was heavily driven by brand with 98% of their traffic coming through branded search.

June 2025: TL;DR

The story of Google versus AI search in June reflects the larger trend of 2025, in that Google is maintaining a solid number of visits and users far ahead of any other competitors.

However, their growth seems to have slowed, with some indication that both traffic and users are trending downward.

On the flip side, AI search users continue to increase at a steady pace. AI search accounted for almost 7.8% of search traffic, up from 7.66% search share in May 2025.