Last month, we shared that 2025 would be the year AI search reaches mainstream audiences. As of February, we're observing a noticeable trend: Google's market share is beginning to decline, while AI-driven searches are gaining significant traction, now accounting for over 5% of total visitors. We anticipate this growth will continue in the coming months.
Concurrently, more publishers are expressing concerns about how AI search is impacting their revenue. This is a critical moment for publishers to evaluate their digital strategies and explore new ways to ensure their content is fairly valued and compensated within the AI internet.
The good news is that Thomson Reuters has won the first AI fair use lawsuit against ROSS Intelligence, a legal AI search platform. This marks a significant victory for the publishing industry and could set a precedent for future legal battles.
Key Trends in AI Search
AI search's extremely low CTR : AI companies rarely disclose their click-through rates, but Tollbit’s latest bot report reveals a crucial insight—AI-driven searches currently have shockingly low CTRs, just 0.3%–0.7%, compared to traditional Google search at 8.63%. This suggests that traffic from AI-powered search results could drop by 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝟵𝟬%, drastically reducing the number of visitors websites can expect.
Google's AI search expansion: Google is aggressively expanding its AI search capabilities. The recently launched “AI” tab in its U.S. search bar signals that AI-driven search is not just an experiment—it’s here to stay.
AI search market share grows: AI search now is more than 5% Google drops didn't entirely make up by AI search from ChatGPt/Perplexity and others, this is something we are still monitoring to see what else we could be missing
Google monthly visits drops: Google's monthly visits has long been stable above 80B. There is a 10% drop in Feb. and there are few possible explanations:
February has 3 fewer days than January, contributing to a natural decline.
However AI search traffic (ChatGPT/Perplexity/DeepSeek) did not follow the same downward trend, suggesting that AI search is gaining grounds or even increasing.
Google’s AIO search features may be reducing visits back to the Google.com domain.
Overall this trend signals a fundamental shift in search behavior. We will continue to monitor developments in March and share further findings next month.
