AI Search Is Growing More Quickly Than Expected

Chatbots are becoming the go-to source for online answers for many consumers, chipping away at the dominance of traditional web search and adding another avenue of outreach that brands must cultivate.

- Patrick Coffee

Chatbots are becoming the go-to source for online answers for many consumers, chipping away at the dominance of traditional web search and adding another avenue of outreach that brands must cultivate to connect with customers.

An estimated 5.6% of U.S. search traffic on desktop browsers last month went to an AI-powered large language - model like ChatGPT or Perplexity, according to Datos, a market intelligence firm that -tracks web users' behavior.

That pales beside the 94.4% that still went to traditional search engines like Alphabet's Google or Microsoft's Bing, which have tried to fight off the new competition by adding artificial intelligence summaries to the top of their search results.

But the percentage of traffic that went to browser based AI search has more than doubled since June 2024, when it was 2.48%, according to Datos, which is part of marketing software company Semrush . It has more than quadrupled since January 2024, when the figure was just under 1.3%.

Datos says it draws its data from more than 10 million panelists worldwide who agree to have their behavior on desktop browsers observed anonymously in exchange for rewards such as free access to software products from the company's partners.

The numbers exclude activity on mobile browsers and apps including those from OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google.

The rapid growth in AI searches could mark a sea change in online behavior comparable to the emergence of Google's web browser and the first social-media platforms, according to Eli Goodman, chief executive and co-founder of Datos.