Search Engines Still Dominate Despite AI Growth
Despite the buzz surrounding AI chatbots as potential Google killers, the data tells a different story. The numbers don’t lie—search engines attracted nearly 24 times more daily traffic than AI chatbots in March 2025. Google, despite a slight dip, still dominated with a staggering 139.9 billion visits in January 2025.
Let’s face it: the AI revolution isn’t quite the search engine apocalypse some predicted.
Sure, AI chatbots are growing. ChatGPT saw a 2.41% increase in visits compared to previous periods. Not bad. And with 51% of chatbot users planning to ramp up their usage, there’s momentum building.
But context matters—AI chatbot traffic remains a mere 1/34th of search engine traffic. Hardly a takeover.
The real story is more nuanced. Google isn’t sitting idle while AI advances—it’s incorporating AI into its own search features. Those neat little AI overviews at the top of search results? They’re changing how we interact with search results, often eliminating the need to click through to publisher sites. Google’s AI Overviews have led to over 10% increase in search usage in major markets like the U.S. and India.
Publishers like The New York Times have felt the pinch as their traffic declines.
Users still prefer traditional search for certain queries. Research-heavy tasks? Complex shopping decisions? Users want variety, multiple sources, and real-time information. AI chatbots simply can’t match the breadth of sources or cross-referencing capabilities that traditional search engines offer.
They’re trained on specific data sets, while Google scours the entire web.
That said, the conversational interface of AI chatbots is reshaping expectations. People like getting quick answers without sifting through pages of results. It’s convenient. Different. But it’s not a replacement—it’s an alternative tool in the information ecosystem. With 300 million jobs expected to be disrupted by AI by 2030, the way we search for information is just one part of a broader technological transformation.
SEO remains vital too. Funny enough, AI chatbots actually rely on search engine crawls for much of their information. The irony! They’re more like search engine sidekicks than replacements.
The web is evolving, not being replaced. AI is changing how we find and consume information, but Google and traditional search aren’t going anywhere soon.
They’re adapting, incorporating AI themselves, and maintaining their dominance through sheer volume and reliability. The average Google user conducts approximately 200 searches per month, demonstrating the enduring reliance on traditional search engines. The reality? We’re heading toward a hybrid future—not a replacement scenario. AI bots aren’t killing Google; they’re just forcing it to evolve.
