Google’s dominance in search wavering, report finds

With AI sessions now making up over 50% of searches worldwide monthly, what does this mean for Google?

Google’s long-running market dominance in search is wavering, with even US market share dropping from 88% in 2023 to just 75% in 2025, with ChatGPT taking 12% of traffic.

The search landscape is changing dramatically, and few things have made more of an impact than the popularisation of LLMs. Speculation surrounding the ‘death of SEO’ has risen since as the volume of traditional searches fell.

There are now 45 billion monthly AI sessions worldwide, with search-related usage or prompts now making up 28% of search globally, of which 17% is in the US, according to Graphite.

Graphite, in partnership with Similarweb, analysed more than 40,000 of the largest sites in the US to evaluate trends in organic search traffic and track if traditional SEO has drastically declined.

A series of reports, published on Five Percent, outlined the scale at which AI is used and the effect this is having on the search landscape. It identified that although SEO traffic is on a slight decline (-2.5%), the traffic rate has been relatively steady since 2023, and in fact, 2025 saw a slight increase with both Google (up by 0.8%), and other search engines (0.4%).

Google’s traffic decreased from 89% in 2023, to 71% in 2025. This leaves ChatGPT to command 20% of the search market (with web and app usage adjusted strictly for asking prompts) According to the report, AI is not taking over, but rather “the pie has gotten bigger”.

Search has not decreased in itself, and neither has Google. Instead, total usage of search – meaning search via LLMs and on search engines – has risen 26% worldwide, and 16% in the US year-on-year (YoY).

Traditional search engine use is plateauing, with little overall movement since 2020, suggesting the popularisation of LLMs like ChatGPT has not eaten into search engine visits.

Is the click-through era dying?

Graphite and Similarweb’s study found that AI Overviews has decreased click-through rates by more than a third (35%). However, AI Overviews only appears in 30% of searches, and prior to its launch, Google had featured snippets, which also reduced click-through rates in 80% of cases.

This mirrors research from Ahrefs, which analysed 300,000 keywords in 2025, and found click-through rates were 34.5% lower on average when an AI Overview was present. This figure increased in 2026 and now sits at 58% – outlining a clear trend.

While there is a small increase in ads being clicked, organic clicks are still ten times more. This is consistent with Google’s statement in August 2025 that, overall, total organic click volume from its search engine to websites has been “relatively stable” YoY.

Nevertheless, this is a significant shift in behaviour, which is transformational for search technology, with 83% of AI usage occurring on mobile apps.

A huge spike in monthly AI usage worldwide (outside of the US) occurred since the start of 2025. This increase is dominated by ChatGPT, which has claimed almost 90% of LLM sessions worldwide, followed by Gemini (4%), and Perplexity (2.4%).

Shopping and retail see big gains in traffic

This could mean a seismic shift for advertisers, with AEO (AI engine optimisation) becoming increasingly more important, and new advertising techniques developed to suit LLM input.

Of the top 10 sites, six have seen positive changes in SEO traffic, including Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Fandom, and Instagram. The remaining four sites have seen varying degrees of negative traffic changes – Wikipedia has seen a 3% drop, followed by Amazon (-1%), Yahoo (-1%), and most notably, Quora site traffic has dropped by 45%.

The biggest winners were shopping portals (up 12%), clothing (8%), and marketplace (8%) – illustrating the favourable landscape for retailers. While both social networks and world news and media saw a 4% increase, too.