With AI Boost, Bing.com Recent Traffic Up 15%, Google.com Down 2.4%

Microsoft’s lead in incorporating ChatGPT-like features at least part of the story

Microsoft’s Bing search engine is starting to see a noticeable gain in traffic attributable, at least in part, to its incorporation of AI chat features.

Key takeaways

• Using the latest seven days of traffic data as a snapshot, bing.com traffic is up 15.4% and traffic to google.com is down 2.4%, according to Similarweb estimates. The figures we’re using in this analysis are for the main domains used by the search engines (not including mail.google.com, maps.google.com, or the subdomains of bing.com). Over the last 28 days, bing.com was up 13.6% and google.com was down 2.8%.
• Although this recent performance may reflect the incorporation of ChatGPT-like functionality from Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, Bing has been making monthly incremental gains of as much as 10% year-over-year for the past couple of years – often at Google’s expense.
• In February 2023, bing.com traffic was up 9%, while google.com traffic was down 3.1%. A year ago, in February 2022 traffic to bing.com was up 8.6% while traffic to google.com was down 0.3%.
• These changes remain a rounding error for search giant Google, which still has gets about 82 times more traffic to the google.com main domain than Microsoft gets to bing.com.
• Traffic to bing.com is growing fast but not as fast as traffic to chat.openai.com, the home of ChatGPT, where the most recent seven days of traffic data are up 21.3% from the week before. The comparable figure for bing.com was 3.9%.

Recent daily traffic has been as much as 20% higher, year over year

Bing.com was already gaining traffic prior to its introduction of ChatGPT-like features, but the gains increased after it introduced its version of an OpenAI chatbot in February.

Bing actually incorporated the new GTP 4 algorithm before it became widely available, although it received some adverse publicity from the “hallucinations” the bot experienced while it was still being fine-tuned. Microsoft wound up adding the ability for users to choose between a more “creative” version of the chatbot (more likely to make things up if it doesn’t know the answer) or a more factual one.

Although bing.com’s growth looks impressive on a relative basis, it looks flat in comparison to what ChatGPT itself has been experiencing lately.

Bing.com was already making incremental gains versus Google

The chatbot and the buzz surrounding it amplified the gains in traffic Bing was already making thanks to factors including its integration with the Edge browser and with Windows.

A long way to go to catch Google

While Bing is experiencing great gains relative to its prior year’s performance, “google” remains the verb associated with search and has a towering lead. But with the recent debut of Google’s Bard chatbot underwhelming AI chat aficionados, Google’s lead in search and discovery technology is beginning to be questioned.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Methodology

Disclaimer: All names, brands, trademarks, and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The data, reports, and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb consist of or include estimated metrics and digital insights generated by Similarweb using its proprietary algorithms, based on information collected by Similarweb from multiple sources using its advanced data methodologies. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy of such data, reports, and materials and shall have no liability for any decision by any third party based in whole or in part on such data, reports, and materials.

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".