ChatGPT loses web traffic by 22% after Gemini 3 rollout shifts AI demand

Ever since Google released its most powerful AI model, the Gemini 3, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been under a lot of pressure to remain relevant in the competitive AI market. While it's building plans to outpace Google, ChatGPT has reportedly lost website traffic of over 22% in the past six weeks, as per data by Similarweb. Alongside website traffic, ChatGPT’s average visitors in a week have reduced to 158 million from 203 million in early January.

On the other hand, Google’s Gemini traffic remained remarkably steady with around 55–60 million daily visits. It is reported that Gemini traffic has grown by 40% in the size of ChatGPT’s web audience. In addition, Gemini’s audience is said to be more engaged in comparison to ChatGPT, despite having a greater number of users. Gemini has about 7 minutes 20 seconds of visit duration, whereas ChatGPT has 6 minutes 32 seconds. This change showcases a major shift in the AI market in how competition is reshaping user preferences. 

According to an Economic Times report, there could be two reasons why ChatGPT’s traffic is declining. One possible reason could be the holiday season slowdown. Another reason could be the growing popularity of Gemini, especially with the new AI model, surpassing most rival AI models. Similarweb also revealed traffic for other AI tools in December: Perplexity.ai had 154.9 million visits, Grok had 247 million visits, and the Chinese AI tool DeepSeek had 282 million visits.

This change showcases a major shift in the AI market in how competition is reshaping user preferences, and the "first-mover advantage" is slowly fading.