New statistics reveal just how far ahead ChatGPT is in AI-powered search engine traffic and its dominance in this sphere is becoming increasingly apparent.
The information is provided in Previsible’s latest 2026 State of AI Discovery Report. This SEO and AI discovery agency has been collecting information about this niche for almost two years. The recently issued report examined 6.77 million visits driven by LLMs in 166 websites across various industries, such as SaaS, e-commerce, finance, legal, health, insurance, education, publishing, and ticketing. The study’s time frame includes the period from November 2024 through May 2026.
The first and the most impressive finding revealed in the report concerns the dominance of ChatGPT in AI-powered search engine traffic. The platform takes a lion’s share in referral traffic coming from standalone AI platforms – 92.4%. In other words, almost 92% out of each 100 visits to a website that are generated by AI chatbots come from ChatGPT and not Gemini, not Perplexity, not Copilot, not Claude.
How Fast Traffic Has Grown Overall
As mentioned above, Previsible has been monitoring the development of the sphere for quite a long time. Monthly AI-powered visits rose from 65,249 in November 2024 to 644,478 in May 2026, resulting in 9.9 times increase in a little bit less than two years’ time. The pace has not shown any signs of slowing down yet.
This growth has not been smooth though. There was a notable decrease in the number of visits in November 2025, as the monthly visits decreased twofold in one month, from 665,659 in October to 333,299 in November. However, this decrease affected mostly the number of visits made through ChatGPT and not other platforms: the platform generated 448,412 visits in October and just 213,345 in November. Previsible claims that it can be related to a change in the way the platform displayed the sources of information, prioritizing Wikipedia and Reddit for example. By December, monthly number of visits made through ChatGPT returned to 442,609 and growth continued.
ChatGPT Keeps Extending Its Lead
During the research, monthly number of visits made through ChatGPT increased 12.8 times, from 47,606 in November 2024 to 610,910 in May 2026. According to the report, ChatGPT remains the only large language model sending a meaningful volume of referral traffic across most industries and page types. As Previsible puts it, optimization of AI visibility without focusing on ChatGPT is just optimization of an abstraction.
This information is crucial for marketers who are building their strategies around AI search. Equal distribution of resources among all platforms may seem balanced, however, according to the report, the actual traffic is generated by one platform.
Claude Is Growing Fast From a Small Base
Though Claude does not attract as much attention as the two leaders do, the platform shows a remarkable growth. The monthly number of visits made through Claude increased 64 times, from 133 in November 2024 to 8,528 in May 2026. Much of this growth happened quite recently though. The visits remained almost stable in 2025, fluctuating around 1,700-2,000 per month. Then, in January 2026, the number of visits jumped up to 2,340, in February – to 3,514 and in March – to 9,501, which means 4 times increase in just two months.
In March 2026, for the first time Claude overtook Perplexity in the number of monthly referral sessions and maintained the lead since then. According to Previsible, the reason for such rapid growth was the platform’s expansion into coding tools, professional workflow solutions and enterprise use along with the increasing popularity of Claude Code and Claude Cowork. Moreover, it should be noted that Claude has acquired a web search capability in March 2025, which was later than some competitors and it may be the reason of its delayed growth.
Claude users behave differently compared to other platforms’ users as well. Previsible found out that the platform tends to send users to educational content, including guides, courses, and research oriented pages. The visits from Claude refer users show higher engagement with the content of a longer format compared to the visitors from other platforms.
Gemini Holds Steady in Second Place
Nowadays, Gemini is the second largest platform in terms of the number of generated visits, having grown 3.2 times, from 5,598 in November 2024 to 18,119 in May 2026. Unlike Claude or ChatGPT, Gemini’s growth has been steady and consistent without any volatility.
As Previsible explains, the actual impact of Gemini on the industry might be underestimated, because it integrates into Google Workspace and Android.
Perplexity and Copilot Are Losing Ground
It should be noted that Perplexity and Copilot lost their positions in the ranking dramatically. The number of monthly visits generated by Perplexity reached its maximum in March 2025 and decreased 61% by May 2026, from 17,507 to 6,788. Copilot’s fall was even steeper as it decreased 96% from its peak value of 8,651 in August 2025 to 339 in May 2026.
As Previsible explains, the reason for such a dramatic fall could be the fact that the platforms changed their strategy and began focusing on keeping users in their apps/browsers and not sending them to other websites.
Where AI Traffic Concentrates by Industry
Finally, Previsible examined what percentage of the traffic of each industry comes from AI platforms.
E-commerce showed the fastest growth of 37 times starting from a very small base. Product pages became the main destination of the visitors who have a purchase intention. Insurance showed 18.9 times growth and reached 1.51% as the highest level of AI traffic penetration among all industries covered in the research. Education grew 5.4 times which is in line with the fact that AI models perform well with multi-step learning questions.
Health was the only industry where AI traffic penetration decreased to 0.17% from 0.23%. The traffic in finance and small business categories grew moderately, as they were starting from a relatively high base.
What This Means for Marketing Teams
Previsible’s recommendations revolve around several important points. First, ChatGPT should become the core of any AI visibility strategy because of being responsible for most of the current traffic. Second, Claude becomes a platform worth following, especially for brands targeting developers, technical buyers, or professional services audiences. The reason behind such recommendation is the growth potential of Claude.
Moreover, according to Previsible, internal site search plays an important role that some teams might underestimate. AI platforms tend to redirect users to an internal site search page instead of specific content. In other words, according to the research findings, in 25 percent of cases, AI will take a visitor to an internal site search page. Poor search experience results in loss of those visitors, who have been specifically directed there by an AI system.
Finally, the report recommends tracking AI traffic by the type of specific page instead of using a single number for the whole website because of large variance in traffic concentration between homepage, pricing page, and product page.
You can see the full research, including all charts and complete methodology in Previsible’s 2026 State of AI Discovery Report.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q 1: What percentage of AI referral traffic does ChatGPT control?
According to the Previsible’s analysis of 6.77 million sessions, ChatGPT controls 92.4 percent of all trackable referral traffic from standalone AI platforms.
Q 2: How much has Claude’s traffic grown?
Claude experienced 64-fold growth during the 19 month study period, growing from 133 monthly sessions in November 2024 to 8,528 sessions in May 2026.
Q 3: Did Claude really overtake Perplexity?
Yes. Claude passed Perplexity in terms of monthly referral sessions in March 2026 and continued to lead.
Q 4: Why did Perplexity’s traffic decline so much?
According to the report, monthly sessions of Perplexity decreased by 61 percent since March 2025, partially because of Perplexity switching to keeping users inside its browser and agent tools.
Q 5: What happened to Copilot?
Copilot saw its monthly sessions decreased by 96 percent from its peak of 8,651 sessions in August 2025 to 339 sessions in May 2026.
Q 6: Which industry saw the fastest AI traffic growth?
E-commerce industry has experienced 37 times increase of AI traffic, with product pages becoming the main entry point for AI referrals.
Q 7: Which industry saw AI traffic decline?
Health industry is the only one among those included in the study, where AI traffic penetration has declined, from 0.23 percent to 0.17 percent.
Q 8: How does Gemini compare to the other platforms?
Gemini holds the second place with stable and low volatile growth of 3.2 times since November 2024, although the report suggests that the reach of the platform might be actually underestimated due to Workspace and Android integrations.
Q 9: Why do AI platforms send so much traffic to internal search pages?
According to the research findings, AI models tend to trust a certain domain, but cannot determine exactly the page a user needs. So, in 25 percent of cases, the user will be directed to internal search results of a website.
Q 10: What should marketing teams prioritize based on this report?
Previsible recommends to focus primarily on ChatGPT optimization, monitor the growth of Claude, improve internal site search experience, and track AI traffic by page type.
