Chatbots are growing fast – but search still rules the web
While chatbots like ChatGPT are seeing explosive growth, they are still a long way from overtaking traditional search engines – and Google remains firmly control of how people find information online.
A recent report found that between April 2024 and March 2025, visits to AI chatbots surged by nearly 81 per cent year on year, hitting 55.2 billion globally.
This dramatic uptick reflects a growing appetite for conversational AI, particularly among younger users who are turning to chatbots for everthing from work tasks to shopping advice.
Leading the chatbot race is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which captured over 86 per cent of total chatbot traffic during the period.
By contract, the rest of the field – including Perplexity, Grok, Claude, Gemini and DeepSeek – still make up a relatively small share of overall usage, though some are growing rapidly.
Search still commands web traffic
Despite increasing chatbot momentum, usage remains dwarfed by traditional search engines.
The top 10 search platforms, led by Google, received a staggering 1.86 trillion visits over the same 12-month period – 34 times more than chatbots.
Just a month ago, the UK’s competition watchdog proposed designating Google with ‘strategic market status’ after an investigation earlier this year revealed market issues.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it had “heard concerns” that Google’s search advertising costs are higher “than would be expected” in a “more competitive market”.
Even on a daily basis, the gap is striking. In March 2025, chatbots averaged around 233 million daily visits, while search engines recorded 5.5 billion.
When comparing individual platforms, the scale imbalance becomes even more pronounced. Google alone saw 1.63 trillion visits between April 2024 and March 2025, averaging 4.7 billion per day.
ChatGPT, by contrast, managed 47.7 billion total visits – about 185 million daily. That’s approximately 26 times less traffic than Google.
Still, the numbers tell a story of fast-changing behaviour. Among Gen Z and millennials, AI tools are quickly becoming a default interface for online tasks.
According to recent research from PYMNTS Intelligence, two-thirds of Gen Z consumers now use AI chatbots like ChatGPT for both work and personal errands.
Millennials are close behind, with 52 per cent reporting they use AI regularly for professional purposes – more than any other age group.
Meanwhile, 73% of baby boomers report no usage at all.
This generational shift is contributing to a slow but meaningful redistribution of traffic.
In the US, AI chatbots captured 5.6 per cent of desktop search activity in June 2025 – more than double their share a year ago, and four times higher than in January.
The future of SEO
This trend is prompting serious questions for brands, publishers, and SEO professionals.
If chatbots are providing answers directly, without linking to websites, what happens to referral traffic? How do businesses remain discoverable in a world where links are replaced by summaries?
Some in the SEO industry argue that this isn’t a death knell for search, but a reconfiguration.
AI chatbots perform best at the top of the funnel – when users are exploring topics or seeking quick insights – but they struggle further down the decision-making path.
When it comes to product research, price comparisons, and purchases, traditional search still wins.
Chatbots also face challenges around monetization. Tools like ChatGPT are expensive to run (by some estimates, OpenAI spends hundreds of thousands of dollars per day on infrastructure), and generating revenue from AI-generated answers remains tricky.
Google, on the other hand, has decades of experience monetising user intent through its ad ecosystem.
That hasn’t stopped it from hedging its bets. In recent months, Google has expanded its AI integrations across products, adding AI-generated overviews to search results and even experimenting with placing ads directly inside chatbot conversations.
By embedding advertising across both search and AI channels, Google is ensuring it keeps a grip on attention, no matter how users choose to ask questions.
In this hybrid landscape, marketers and SEO professionals will need to rethink strategies across multiple fronts.
While AI chat may dominate early-stage research, traditional search still plays a pivotal role in discovery, commerce, and conversion.
For now, search engines remain the gateway to the web, despite the gate itself slowly changing shape.