Published on March 12th, 2025
Are AI Tools Taking Over Google Search? A Data-Driven Analysis
For years, two burning questions have fueled speculation among marketers and the media:
- Are AI tools stealing market share from Google Search?
- Is Google Search growing, stagnating, or declining?
Since ChatGPT’s launch, we’ve seen wild claims suggesting Google’s search market share has dropped by 5-10%.
Some users report abandoning Google entirely in favor of AI tools. However, until now, no comprehensive, data-backed analysis has examined these claims.
Thanks to our research in partnership with Datos (a Semrush company), we can finally provide clarity. Let’s break it down step by step.
Google Search Growth: The Hard Data (2023-2024)
Using Datos’ U.S. panel of active desktop devices that visited Google at least once per month in 2023 and 2024, we compared search volume year-over-year. The findings?
Google’s search volume grew by 21.64% in a single year—an impressive feat for a mature platform. This aligns with Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s statement regarding AI Overviews introduced in 2024:
“We are seeing an increase in search usage among people who use the new AI overviews as well as increased user satisfaction with the results.”
Far from AI tools cannibalizing Google, AI-powered search enhancements appear to be fueling growth. However, the introduction of AI answers has led to a sharp decline in click-through rates (CTR):
- Organic CTR down 70% (Seer Interactive study)
- Paid CTR down 12% (AWR study)
While Google search volume is up, user behavior is shifting, affecting how marketers approach SEO and paid advertising.
Who Are Google’s AI Competitors?
Most people recognize ChatGPT, but AI search competition includes:
- ChatGPT (OpenAI)
- Perplexity AI
- Claude (Anthropic)
- Copilot (Microsoft)
- Gemini (Google’s own AI)
Among them, only ChatGPT commands a meaningful slice of search traffic. Gemini, though strong, is part of Google, and the other tools remain niche.
This means that ChatGPT is the only true AI search competitor worth measuring against Google—at least for now.
Google vs. ChatGPT: A Direct Comparison
To fairly compare Google and ChatGPT, we need:
- Total Google searches per day/year → 5+ trillion searches in 2024 (~14B/day) (Google’s public statement, confirmed by Datos & SparkToro)
- Total ChatGPT prompts per day/year → 1 billion messages/day (Sam Altman, OpenAI)
- Percentage of ChatGPT prompts that function like search queries → 30% (Semrush analysis of 80M clickstream prompts)
Breaking Down ChatGPT’s Search Volume
ChatGPT users engage in conversational interactions, averaging 8 messages per session (Semrush). Applying this to OpenAI’s 1 billion daily messages:
- Total prompts/day = 125 million
- Search-intent prompts (30%) = 37.5 million/day
The Verdict: Google’s Market Dominance
- Google: 14 billion searches/day
- ChatGPT: 37.5 million search-like prompts/day
- Google’s search volume is 373x larger than ChatGPT’s
Even in a best-case scenario where all AI tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, Gemini) had 100% search-like intent, AI-powered search would still account for less than 2% of total search market share.
What This Means for Marketers
1. Google Isn’t Losing Search Dominance—Yet
Despite AI tools’ rapid adoption, Google remains the dominant player in search. However, the rise of AI-generated answers is changing how users interact with search results, leading to declining CTRs.
2. AI Tools Are Growing, But Not Replacing Search
ChatGPT’s search-like queries are on par with Pinterest (~20M searches/day) and one-third of DuckDuckGo (~108M searches/day). It’s growing, but nowhere near the scale of Google.
3. Marketers Should Optimize for AI & Traditional Search
While AI tools haven’t overtaken Google, they are shifting user behavior. Businesses should adapt their SEO and content strategies accordingly:
- Optimize for featured snippets & AI Overviews to increase visibility.
- Enhance brand presence in AI tools through citations and authoritative content.
- Diversify traffic sources beyond Google Search (social media, AI tools, direct traffic).
Final Thoughts: Ignore the Hype, Follow the Data
AI tools are a valuable complement to search, but they aren’t replacing Google anytime soon. Marketers should continue prioritizing Google Search while exploring AI tool visibility strategically, not reactively.
If you’ve been pouring resources into AI search visibility due to media hype, this data-driven analysis should help you reassess where to allocate your efforts.
Stay informed, stay adaptable, and ensure your marketing investments align with where your customers actually search—not just where trends suggest they might.
