🔎 Will ChatGPT Replace Google? Maybe Someday, But Not Anytime Soon
AI chatbots are often seen as an alternative—or even a replacement—for traditional search engines. But are they actually a threat to Google's dominance?
To find out, the team at OneLittleWeb analyzed 1.9 trillion website visits across the 10 biggest search engines and 10 top chatbots from April 2023 to March 2025.
They found that even though chatbot traffic grew 1.8 times in just one year, it's still far below the level of search engines. In fact, the total traffic to chatbots was 34 times lower than to search engines.
What Else They Discovered:
🎥 Both groups have clear leaders: Google holds 87.6% of the search engine market, while ChatGPT makes up 86.3% of chatbot traffic. Google is still visited 26 times more often than ChatGPT. Still, chatbot ranks third in traffic among search services, behind only Google and Bing.
🎥 The fastest-growing chatbots are Grok, from Elon Musk's xAI, and DeepSeek, a Chinese service that became the second most-used chatbot in the world, even though hardly anyone knew about it at the beginning of the year.
🎥 Overall search engine traffic dropped just 0.51% over the past year.
🎥 Search engines adapt too. Google, Bing, and others add AI summaries and generative search to keep users.
💻 Coexistence Instead of Replacement
According to OneLittleWeb, chatbots aren't replacing search engines—they're becoming useful add-ons. Age plays a big role in how people search: Gen Z is more likely to turn to AI, while older users still prefer to "Google it." People also tend to trust search engines when they want the full picture, while chatbots are great for short, simple answers, without clicking through links.
The study has limits: it only includes website traffic and doesn't track mobile apps or API requests. Still, the researchers say this doesn't change the overall findings.
You can read the full report here.
And how do you search online?
😎 — All AI, way easier!
❤️ — I mix it up: some AI, mostly Google.
🎃 — I keep it old-school!