Search Parties: Despite AI-Driven Competition, Google Still Dominating Search

AI’s abrupt disruption of search is a phenomenon that I, along with every other digital publisher and marketer, have been following closely, ever since the letters “GPT” started more easily rolling off our tongues and from our fast-flying typing-fingers.

So while we consider AI’s potential impacts this year and beyond, it’s still vitally important to know what it’s doing in the present. 

And Similarweb’s recent look at search platforms shows Google is still clearly No. 1, with more than 30 times more visits than ChatGPT.

(Source: EMARKETER)

“In December 2024, Google.com dominated generated AI (genAI) search with 16.5 billion visitors, while runner-up ChatGPT had just 517 million,” EMARKETER says of the Similarweb findings. “Marketers can [pursue] ads within Google’s AI Overviews given its vast lead in the genAI search market.”

Google’s introduction of AI Overviews is no doubt helping the company keep its edge, with a recent Brightedge breakdown showing an AI Overview was triggered in twice as many long queries from September to December 2024, demonstrating “that it can use its wide-ranging data set and index to answer longer, more complicated queries in a more precise and targeted manner than it could previously.”

What Google’s ever-expanding AI competition does in the years/months/days/minutes ahead is anyone’s guess, but at this precise moment just a few seconds before these fast-flying typing-fingers will hit the “Publish” button, Google still reigns at search.