Global daily visits to Google search are“stable” despite the surge in the number of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude that summarize answers for users, according to an exclusive Bank of America Global Research report seen by PYMNTS, released Monday (Feb. 10).
In January, global average daily visits to Google were up 1% to 2.7 billion from December and down just 1% year over year (YoY), according to BofA analysts, citing data from Statcounter. The daily visits include desktop and mobile searches.
Notably, Google search stability comes as AI chatbots proliferate and their usage rises. Last month, visits to ChatGPT were up 4% month over month (MoM) and 148% YoY to 128 million globally. (OpenAI specifically introduced search capabilities for ChatGPT last October.)
“So far, ChatGPT and other AI based engines do not appear to be materially impacting Google search traffic or share, but could be capturing a healthy share of incremental AI driven activity,” the analysts wrote.
Google’s response to competition from AI chatbots for users is its AI Overviews, which generates summaries based on the user’s query. However, BofA analysts said it did not help Google search.
“We are not seeing a boost to Google’s traffic from AI Overviews,” the report said.
In the U.S., Google daily visits were up 2% to 542 million MoM and flat YoY, while ChatGPT was up 4% MoM and up 96% YoY to 18 million.
Among AI chatbots, the most popular in January were Perplexity and Claude, from Anthropic, the analysts said. In the U.S., Perplexity traffic was up 10% over the month to 800,000 and rose 429% from the prior year. Claude was up 3% over the month and 331% to 600,000 YoY.
When it comes to market share, the analysts said Google’s global search share was up 0.05% MoM and down 1.69% YoY to 89.8% of all searches. Bing was down 0.04% for the month but up 0.5% YoY to 3.9%.
“Risks in 2025 include traffic pressure from emerging AI competition, new OpenAI ads could impact Google search budgets, and U.S. and EU Court rulings could impact long-term sentiment,” the analysts said.
Last August, Google lost a critical search and ads antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. government, which alleges that the company monopolizes these two markets. The U.S. Justice Department wants Google to divest its Chrome web browser, among other remediations.
Google plans to appeal the ruling. In the meantime, the tech giant proposed ending the exclusive agreement with Apple and other tech companies that use Google as their default search engine.
Google is also facing similar antitrust litigation in Europe and a coalition of U.S. states.