ChatGPT Loses Dominance as Gemini Claims 22% of the AI Market

ChatGPT's dominance in the artificial intelligence market is rapidly eroding. According to data from Similarweb, published on January 22, ChatGPT's global share of traffic fell to 64.6% as of January 16, 2026. Just a month earlier, in mid-December, ChatGPT had a 66.8% share.

Meanwhile, Google Gemini recorded significant growth and captured 22% of global AI website traffic during the same period, up from 19.5% in mid-December. Just one year earlier, in January 2025, ChatGPT held an overwhelming 86.6% market share. This means it lost more than 22 percentage points in just twelve months.

Grok overtakes DeepSeek for the first time

In the latest measurements, xAI's Grok moved ahead of DeepSeek for the first time. Grok captured 3.5% of traffic, while DeepSeek fell to 3.3%. This is an interesting reversal, as Grok had lagged behind DeepSeek in earlier measurements during 2025. Claude maintained a steady 2.1%, while Perplexity fell to 1.9% from the previous 2.1%. Microsoft Copilot continued its gradual decline, dropping to just 1.1% market share despite extensive distribution through Windows and Office. The data captures traffic during the week after the Christmas period, when the use of AI tools typically rises again. Similarweb stated on social media that, following a decline at the end of the year, traffic reached higher levels than in any previous month since August.

A look at the full year reveals how quickly the AI chatbot landscape is changing. ChatGPT controlled a full 86.6% of traffic in January 2025, falling to 78.3% in June and 72.9% in October. In the final quarter of 2025, it lost approximately 2.2 percentage points per month. Gemini moved in the opposite direction. A year ago, Google's product had only a 5.3% share, which nearly doubled to 8.7% in June, accelerated to 13.3% in October, and reached 22% in the latest measurements. This represents growth of 315% over twelve months.

DeepSeek peaked at 4.5% in June and then fell to 3.3% in January. The Chinese AI model experienced considerable volatility during 2025, with earlier data showing a sharp rise at the beginning of 2025 followed by a decline after the second quarter. Grok showed a recovery after a weaker middle of the year. The xAI product had a 2.6% share in June, fell to 2.4% in October, and then grew steadily to 3.5% in January. The release of Grok 4 in July brought a 17% increase in users the following day, providing momentum that lasted through the end of the year.

Google is growing rapidly

Gemini's traffic growth reflects Google's systematic integration of AI capabilities across its entire product portfolio. The company incorporated Gemini into Search, Gmail, Google Workspace, and Android devices throughout 2025, creating distribution advantages that competitors find difficult to replicate. The platform's user base grew from 450 million monthly active users in July to 650 million in October 2025, coinciding with the release of the Nano Banana image generator. Google's multi-year partnership with Apple, announced in January 2026, positions Gemini models as the foundation for Apple Intelligence, which is set to launch later this year.

Research by Microsoft Clarity published on December 18 showed that traffic from AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini, surged by 155% over the eight-month period ending in November 2025. The analysis examined data from more than 1,200 publishing and news websites.

ChatGPT still generates substantially more referral traffic to external websites despite its declining share. Data from the SEO platform Conductor showed that ChatGPT drove more than 1.6 billion visits to external websites between September and November 2025, while Gemini generated 287 million website visits during the same period.

Mobile apps account for a large share

Similarweb's full-year analysis revealed that mobile app adoption outpaced website visits for major platforms during 2025. Perplexity showed the most dramatic shift, starting January 2025 with similar levels of app usage and daily website visits, but twelve months later it recorded a massive increase in app engagement. ChatGPT reached 700 million weekly active users by July 2025, according to an internal analysis published in September by researchers from OpenAI, Duke University, and Harvard University. This scale demonstrates continued user acquisition despite declining market share percentages.

Traditional search engines maintained relatively stable performance during this period. The traditional search category fell by 3% year over year as of January 16, with Google down 2%, Bing down 11%, and Yahoo down 16%. DuckDuckGo fell by 7%, while Yandex remained unchanged.

Consumer education platforms continued to weaken, with the category falling by 5% year over year. Chegg fell by 68%, Mathway by 63%, and Coursehero by 48%. Grammarly, with a 7% decline, performed relatively better compared with older educational technology platforms.

Source: ppc.land