According to Bank of America’s traffic data, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is holding its position despite growing competition from a range of AI challengers. Visits have increased, mobile users are growing, and the company’s share remains stable even as Claude and Gemini have recorded triple-digit growth. That stability may initially look like a positive sign for Google Search. However, traffic alone is becoming a less reliable indicator of the search business’s health. An increasing portion of visits now end without users clicking through to another site. This means stable traffic does not necessarily translate into stable monetization.
Google’s Traffic Resilience, By the Numbers
Google’s global search traffic remained resilient in August, with average daily web visits rising 3% year over year to 2.8 billion. By comparison, ChatGPT’s web traffic declined 5% to 181 million. The gap was more significant among other AI competitors, as Gemini’s traffic jumped 261% year over year, Meta AI increased 175%, and Claude grew 533%. In the United States, Google visits also rose 3%, compared with a 432% increase for Claude and a 177% gain for Gemini. The company also continued to expand its mobile user base, adding 3 million daily active users to reach 2.3 billion. ChatGPT added 21 million mobile users, taking its total to 469 million.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post commented:
[August] data suggests Google traffic and user growth remained largely stable, while ChatGPT had a notable m/m uptick possibly aided by school starts. Overall, data suggests AI adoption continues to expand the search market, and Google search usage remains stable despite growth at competing platforms. With ChatGPT at over 1B users, the recent ramp in ChatGPT ads has had greater investor focus (a $1B annualized revenue run rate). While we don’t expect an impact this year given a $600bn+ Western Digital ad market, we would expect a bigger investor focus on [September and October] ad check calls.
Steady Visits, Weaker Conversions
Google’s traffic numbers may look stable on the surface, but user behavior within search is changing. By early 2026, roughly 68% of US Google searches ended without a click, according to SparkToro. The share of searches resulting in any click has fallen nearly 10 percentage points since 2024. AI Overviews now appear on about 20% of searches and have reduced click-through rates to top organic results by as much as 58%. Meanwhile, according to Digital Content Next, Google’s referrals to publishers have declined by a median of 10% year over year, even as overall traffic to Google itself remained steady.
