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AI showdown: ChatGPT web traffic slips as Gemini’s share rises 3.3%

While the December holiday period often sees weaker overall online activity, ChatGPT losing traffic share can also be seen in the context of Gemini’s growing appeal.

Beyond Gemini and ChatGPT, Similarweb’s data suggests that other AI models are also gaining traction. (Express Image)

Web traffic to OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been declining in recent months while Google’s Gemini has continued to gain momentum, according to analytics firm SimilarWeb.

Worldwide desktop and mobile traffic to the ChatGPT website decreased by 9.6 per cent in January from October 2025, while average daily visits to the popular AI chatbot platform have fallen by 22 per cent over the past six weeks, based on Similarweb’s analysis.

Between December 7, 2025, and January 3, 2026, ChatGPT averaged nearly 200 million daily visits before traffic slid to around 158 million later on. During the same period, Gemini’s traffic was recorded at around 55-60 million daily visits, with its share of global traffic increasing by 3.3 per cent month-over-month in December.

ChatGPT’s recent decline in web traffic comes even as Gemini’s usage has continued to grow, helping narrow the gap between the two AI chatbot platforms that together serve hundreds of millions of users globally.

Traffic share to AI chatbot websites since January 2025. (Image: Similarweb)

While the December holiday period often sees weaker overall online activity, ChatGPT losing traffic share can also be seen in the context of Gemini’s growing appeal since the rollout of the latest Gemini 3 model upgrade in November 2025, which drew early positive feedback from several users.

At the time, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that while he had used ChatGPT every day for the past three years, he is making the switch to Gemini 3. “Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I’m not going back. The leap is insane — reasoning, speed, images, video… everything is sharper and faster. It feels like the world just changed, again,” Benioff wrote in a post on X.

Also Read | How Gemini 3 has pushed Google to the front of AI race

Gemini’s growth in traffic share is also notable as it does not factor in Google’s distribution advantage. The charts specifically measure traffic to the URL, not native usage of AI chatbots, SimilarWeb clarified. However, ChatGPT.com remains the leading AI chatbot interface globally with 64.5 per cent of the worldwide traffic share.

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‘Code red’ at OpenAI

In December 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared a ‘code red’ situation and privately warned staffers that the AI startup is facing “rough vibes” and “temporary economic headwinds” following the roll-out of Gemini 3.

During its launch, Google said that the latest Gemini 3 series of models is able to provide better answers to more complex questions as it can understand text, images, audio, and spatial cues with support for multiple languages. Gemini 3 Flash, the latest addition to the Gemini 3 AI model family, has been designed to offer advanced reasoning and multimodal capabilities with a considerable reduction in latency and cost.

Daily average visits to generative AI tools since July 2025. (Image: Similarweb)

While Gemini’s web users are fewer in number compared to ChatGPT, data suggests that they are more engaged and having deeper interactions per session. For instance, the average visit duration for Gemini is 7 minutes and 20 seconds with users viewing 4.3 pages per visit. In contrast, ChatGPT’s average visit duration stood at 6 minutes and 32 seconds, with users viewing 3.8 pages per visit.

Beyond Gemini and ChatGPT, Similarweb’s data suggests that other AI models are also gaining traction.

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Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk-owned xAI, saw 247 million visits (3.51 per cent) in December 2025. It nearly equalled DeepSeek, which recorded 282 million visits (4 per cent). Meanwhile, Perplexity.ai recorded 154.9 million visits (2.19 per cent share). “Driven by the winter break, the daily average visits to all tools dropped to August-September levels,” Similarweb said.

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