Reporting on Google’s market share today is like reporting on the sky (do you know it’s blue?).
But at the moment, Searching for Alpha revealed an article with a clickable headline of ChatGPT eats away at Google search’s dominance.
This text (which is paywalled, so I’m not linking to it) relies on a Financial institution of America report (why is Financial institution of America speaking about search market share?), which relies on knowledge from StatCounter and Comparable Net, which I realized of through an X put up by Greg Sterling.
By the numbers. Google’s worldwide search market share, in response to StatCounter:
- October 2023: 91.53%
- October 2022: 92.34%
That is Google’s lowest world search market share prior to now 12 months. However is that this ChatGPT consuming into Google’s search market share? Extraordinarily unlikely.
The issue? Statcounter doesn’t observe ChatGPT as a result of – whats up? – it isn’t a search engine. It’s an LLM-based generative AI chatbot.
Comparatively secure. Google Search has been “comparatively secure” over the previous 12 months, in response to the report. Properly, sure. However we will really go additional again than that on StatCounter.
Google has been “comparatively secure” since August 2015. That’s the month Google surpassed 91% search market share worldwide for the primary time.
Previously seven years, Googe’s search market share has bounced round from 91.1% (December 2015) to 93.37% (February 2023). For many of those eight years, ChatGPT didn’t exist, together with from April to August 2018 when Google’s search market share dipped under 91%.
What about Bing? Microsoft Bing continues to be down year-on-year, 3.13% (October 2023) vs. 3.59% (October 2022), in response to Statcounter. In the meantime, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has warned us that AI will make Google extra dominant.
Dig deeper. The brand new Bing has didn’t take any market share from Google after six months.
Different numbers. Some month-over-month comparisons from Comparable Net:
- Google visitors declined to 2.8 billion (down 0.4%).
- Bard visitors elevated to eight.7 million (up 2%).
- Bing visitors elevated to 42.7 million (up 8%)
- ChatGPT visitors elevated to 55 million (up 4%). An necessary reminder right here – ChatGPT’s visitors is just 2% of Google’s net visitors.
Why we care. Generative AI is – and can proceed to – reshape search as we all know it. However false narratives aren’t useful for anyone. Google continues to be as dominant because it has been since 2015. The influence of Google, ChatGPT and generative AI on search is a narrative for search entrepreneurs to look at. However for now, there’s nothing to see right here.
