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.

August 2025: TL;DR

There were over 7.5 billion visits to AI search platforms in August, with 5.8 billion attributed to ChatGPT.

Year-to-date stats for Google visits are slightly below 2024, but Google fared well in July, posting its third consecutive month of marginal growth in visits. 

The release of GPT5 helped ChatGPT to swell by over 50 million new users and to increase market share to 78.2% of AI tools.

Traffic to AI search versus Google search

Year on Year traffic to Google 

Google brought in 83.9 billion global visits in August 2025 and saw a 0.42% increase on the same month last year. Though a small margin by percentage, this amounts to about 358 million more visits in August 2025 than in 2024. Despite these positive signs, they were down marginally on July 2025’s traffic by 0.69%. 

Zooming out across the last year, we see that Google is down slightly but may be closing the gap. So in August, the 12-month average for monthly visits was 82.6 billion, a 0.95% decrease on the previous 12-month average, but a better rate than in July's -1% average. While Average MoM growth, bolstered by strong numbers in the third consecutive positive month, came in at 0.1%. Traffic YTD for Google is still down by 1% but if they continue to see growth, they may finish the year in the black.

Traffic to AI search grows monthly

In August 2025, AI search traffic accounted for 8.2% of search traffic, up from 8% search share in July.

In August 2025 we saw continued growth for AI search platforms, with combined traffic to ChatGPT, Deepseek, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok and Claude, reaching 7.5 billion visits. 

AI search visits in August grew by 1.9% compared to the month before and are up by 150% YoY, up from 3.5 billion visits in August 2024.

Indeed, over the last 12 months, AI search has seen average YoY traffic increases of over 416%, and average monthly growth of 8%. 

Monthly active users on AI search vs. Google search

For August 2025, AI search users grew at a much higher rate than MoM Google users. So AI search users grew by 2.91%, or about 55 million users. While Google users actually decreased marginally by .01%, the equivalent of about 358,000 users compared to the month before. 

This means that the ratio of Google users to AI search users was 4.4 to 1. To put into context, a year ago the ratio was 10 to 1.

Speaking of last year, data suggests that year-on-year global unique visitors to Google increased by less than a percent in August 2025, coming in at around 3.25 billion. But if we compare this year to August 2023, visitors are down by over 2%, from 3.32 billion.

Meanwhile, year-on-year unique visitors for AI search have doubled from 338 million in August 2024 to 743 million in Aug 2025.

AI search tools by market share

AI search tool audience growth directly effected by new feature and model releases as evidenced by growth of ChatGPT and Claude in August.

August was ChatGPT’s biggest month for user growth this year. Undoubtedly driven by the release of GPT5,  they welcomed over 50 million more users than in July 25. ChatGPT continues to hold a commanding 78.2% market share in August 2025. ChatGPT has emerged as the market leader in AI search, with their August 2025 unique visitors increasing by 11.6% to 488 million, compared to the month before.

Other winners this month include Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. While the other platforms saw modest growth inline with average performance, Claude had a stand out month for traffic with increasing their visits by 18% after the release of their latest model, Claude Opus 4.1. Interestingly though they both released new models, Claude saw an increase in page views compared to July 2025, but ChatGPT actually saw a decrease. 

On the other end of the spectrum, Grok and Deepseek each experienced a decrease in traffic. Deepseek's almost 9% negative growth is no surprise, as although its visits are still larger than those of many other platforms, it invests very little in the marketing and feature development that instigates additional visits for competitors.

Grok’s 5% drop in traffic, is also not unprecedented. In July, Grok surged to over 200 million users, only to drop back down to 190 million users, but the same thing happened between March and April 2025. This suggests that user engagement is a challenge for the platform as both users and traffic fluctuate every month.

A deeper look at ChatGPT

ChatGPT has 1.9x more users than the next six most used AI search tools combined

Between July and August 2025, visits to ChatGPT increased by 2% but uniques grew by 11.6% to 489 million users. This consistency helped ChatGPT increase its market share in August.

ChatGPT is now the 5th most visited site globally, up from 17th in August last year. In August, ChatGPT was the only top 10 website in the United States to experience growth in monthly traffic. ChatGPT audience adoption rates vary by country so geographical research should form part of your strategy.

Three notable stats on ChatGPT for August 2025:

1. Unique visitors are increasing. According to Similarweb, around 23 million users were exclusive to ChatGPT and not Google in August 2025. This is up from 7.6million exclusive visitors in August 2024.

2. Global markets drive growth. In August, ChatGPT grew in 4 out of 5 of its top markets. By comparison, Google saw no growth in top markets.

   
   

3. Significant increase in ChatGPT traffic to Wikipedia. Globally Wikipedia saw 22% more referral traffic in August from ChatGPT, but in the US outgoing traffic to Wikipedia was up 32% MoM

September predictions

Expect to see a Perplexity growth uptick with the release of Comet and to see steady growth for Claude and users discover the new model. 

Though we have seen marginal but steady growth from Google MoM throughout the summer,  I'll be interested to see if this continues through September.  Typically speaking, September is not a month that normally sees a traffic uptick for Google and their demographics are less likely to be impacted by seasonal activities like the return to school year for many around the globe. Conversely, 53% of ChatGPT's audience is under 34 years old, so they may see growth in this market with the start of the academic year.

Gemini’s image editing feature, Nano Banana, should boost their usership significantly, taking them comfortably over 800 million global visits.