Report: Google Search traffic and queries not impacted by new competing AI search engines

Traffic to Google Search seems to have not fallen with the rise of new AI search engines and AI based search related features, including from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot and other specialty search engines.

New data from Datos’ clickstream panel, analyzed by Sonata Insights and covered in more detail by Rand Fishkin at Sparktoro shows Google may have grown 1.4% from May 2023 to May 2024. “In May of 2024, Google has slightly more desktop visits than they did in May of 2023 (+1.4% growth), while the largest of the AI search players by this metric (Perplexity), was at 15.69 (+42% growth from the year prior),” Rand Fishkin wrote.

The data. Here is the chart showing Google versus the other AI search players in the field:

Here is a chart showing query data but it leaves out the actual numbers. It does show searches per search user and how much larger Google is than all the other players.

Rand Fishkin said, “Google had more than 290x the number of search users as Perplexity in May.” If you compare Google’s about “200 “events” (i.e. searches) per searcher per month, Perplexity is ~15,” Rand extrapolated. “In essence, Perplexity’s users are about 7.5% as active on the platform as Google’s users are on Google,” he added.

More details. You can download the full report over here and you can read more on the Sparktoro blog.

Earlier we asked if Google lost market share to Bing in May and it turned out Google did not. Then there are predictions that search as we know it will slow, but will it?

Why we care. Even with all these AI search features and AI speciality engines, we still see Google has significant search market share. Will that change over the years, time will tell. But for now, Google is still a very dominate player.