As the so-called AI arms race heats up, US site visit data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb reflects early changes in consumer behavior.

• Bing has captured more traffic. On March 8, Microsoft announced Bing had surpassed 100 million daily active users worldwide. The new Bing made its public debut shortly thereafter, and since then, its US site visits have spiked. But growth hasn’t been consistent, and it remains to be seen whether a critical mass of users will adopt Bing in the long run.
• Google has lost a little traffic. With no fewer than 460 million visits per day from US users between November 2022 and early May 2023, it still dwarfs Bing, which peaked at 13.8 million daily visits during the same period, per Similarweb. But responses to its chatbot, Bard—which opened for public access on May 10—have been generally negative, and it’s unclear how long users will have to wait for generative AI to be integrated into Google Search. If Google can’t recover from its AI fumbles, its site traffic might continue to slowly erode.
• ChatGPT itself is also winning a lot more traffic. But it started from zero, and it’s much more than a search engine. We expect it will continue its upward trajectory as consumer awareness spreads and more businesses integrate AI tools into their daily workflows.

Other search players, including Neeva, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Yelp, and Baidu, have also thrown their hats in the ring with AI-assisted products.