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.

July 2025: TL;DR

There were over 7.3 billion visits to AI search platforms in July, with over 5.7 billion attributed to ChatGPT.

Though year to date stats are below 2024, Google fared well in July, posting their second consecutive month of marginal growth in visits. 

Meanwhile, new models and features drove user growth for Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot in July, but ChatGPT maintained their 78% of AI search market share.

Traffic to AI search versus Google search

Year on Year traffic to Google 

Google traffic remained stable YoY for July: 84.5 billion global visits this month showed a 0.2% increase YoY. This might seem like a small margin, and it is, but that equates to 135 million more visits in July 2025 than in July 2024. It's slightly higher than June 2025 as well. Though marginal, so far, June 2025 and July 2025 marked the only YoY increases in global visits to Google. If this trend continues, it could be a reflection of recent report that AI search use may be increasing classic search visits; time will tell.  

Zooming out beyond July, the 12-month average for monthly visits was 82.5 billion, a 1.4% decrease on the previous 12-month average. Average MoM growth, bolstered by strong numbers in March and July, came in at 0.1%.

Traffic to AI search grows monthly

In July 2025, AI search traffic accounted for 8% of search traffic, up from 7.8% search share in June.

In July 2025 we saw continued growth for AI search platforms, with combined traffic to ChatGPT, Deepseek, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok and Claude, reaching over 7 billion visits. 

AI search visits in July grew by 6% compared to the month before and are up by 156% YoY, up from 2.9 billion visits in July 2024 to 7.3 billion visits in July 2025.

Indeed, over the last 12 months, AI search has seen average YoY traffic increases of over 526% and average monthly growth of 8%. 

Monthly active users on AI search vs. Google search

In July 2025, Google users increased at a higher rate than AI search users. So, Google users increased by 3.21% while AI search users increased by 2.8%.This means that the ratio of Google users to AI search users was 10:1 in July, on par with what we saw in June 2025.

Data suggests that year-on-year global unique visitors to Google increased by less than a percent in July 2025, coming in at around 3.2 billion. But if we compare this year to July 2023, visitors are down by over 1.7%, from 3.3 billion.

Meanwhile, year-on-year unique visitors for AI search have doubled from 323 million in July 2024 to 688 million in July 2025.

AI search tools by market share

ChatGPT continues to dominate the AI search market, maintaining a 78% market share in July 2025. ChatGPT has emerged as the market leader in AI search, with their July 2025 unique visitors increasing by 5.3% to 437 million.

Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot increased their month over month usership in July following product releases. Riding on the July release of the Grok 4 model, X’s flagship AI attracted more than 7 million unique users, growing their user base by 35% and increasing their visits by 27%. Claude Code and updates to the Claude 3.7 Sonnet helped Anthropic's model grow by 10.5% visits, pulling in 4.5% more uniques. And Perplexity’s Comet web browser release helped them draw in 18% more uniques and 8% more visits than the month before.

On the other end of the scale, Deepseek, continues to decline in uniques and visits, shedding 9% of its visits and 12% uniques.

Gemini posted a decline of 5% in uniques and but an increase of 7.9% in visits. While this might seem like a counterintuitive statistic, it could be related to the increased integration of Gemini into Android in July. Including the addition of Gemini in the Pixel Watch, repeat visits may have been triggered by users experimenting with the new features. Even with this decline, Gemini’s market share grew to 9.54% from 9.4% in June.

A deeper look at ChatGPT

ChatGPT has 1.7x more users than the next six most used AI search tools combined. Understanding ChatGPT can help marketers to perform better across all AI search platforms. 

Between June and July 2025, visits to ChatGPT increased by 6% and usership grew by 5.3% to 437 million unique visitors. This consistent growth helped them maintain their market share despite surges in users and traffic seen by Grok and Perplexity.

Three notable stats on ChatGPT for July 2025:

1. Cross visits are stable when compared to Google. According to Similarweb, around 16% of users visit ChatGPT and Google every day. This rate of audience overlap has been about the same for the last 6 months.

   
   

2. New users made up 19% of ChatGPT visitors in July 2025 and returning users increased by 3% from the month before. 

   
   

3. ChatGPT’s relationship with Microsoft is alive and well. After OpenAI, MSN was ChatGPT’s next highest referrer. Conversely, ChatGPT increased their outgoing traffic to Bing by more than 230% in July.

August predictions

Typically speaking, surges in AI search users follow new feature releases, however ChatGPT 5 has had a mixed reception. While I doubt that traffic will decline as a result, it may not trigger trigger the same increases that we've seen previously.

Gemini's July decline in uniques is notable. As mentioned, it may be the result Gemini becoming less of a destination and more of the all encompassing tech behind Google's suite of products. For instance, as Gemini is added to the upcoming Pixel 10, fewer users may need to visit the site directly. With AI Mode's introduction in the UK, we may see a similar effect.