Search engine referral report for 2025 Q2

Considering the fact that very few people exit from AI searches into the web, rather than just ending the session (having received the answer they were looking for); it seems to me that this report would vastly overstate traditional search engine market share. Personally I’ve basically stopped using Google as my primary search. I usually start by searching in an LLM. Especially if the query is complex (e.g. give me a summary of USAs current lunar missions and progress towards a lunar base.) The only time I still go to google is for maps related searches. To find local businesses. But often in that case I will go directly to maps.google.com. I would like to see a real report on market share. I expect Google has lost a lot and hasn’t yet admitted it.

Google on 88.9% of search results clicked and bing on 3.056% with everyone else even less. This is not a competitive market and it seems very stable over time.

I highly doubt these numbers.

I see how (in Italy/Poland) me, my friends and relatives have turned towards Gemini for the lots of queries.

People walking around the streets and asking Gemini for restaurants, directions or any general questions is starting to be extremely common, but I doubt that Cloudflare can measure those (afterall it never goes through a browser since Gemini app is embedded in the home button of Android phones).

I also doubt that Cloudflare measures the gargantuan amount of queries people do through, e.g., their AI desktop apps or stuff like Claude Code, that effectively replaces google searches.

I really want to know how many search requests are being made by ChatGPT and other AI systems in 2025. I know OpenAI has a partnership with Bing for this, but then I see OpenAI in the list on the post.

Do we know if they're sending the referer header? Maybe there is no way to know. It would just be interesting to see that trend over time.

From a personal experience, at least 50% of my Google searches moved to ChatGPT and Claude. Since, I saw many similar transitions with my friends and coworkers, I was expecting higher numbers for OpenAI.

Do you see a similar transition in your network?

Kagi didn’t even make the list? I’ve completely switched away from Google and only use Kagi…

Why are there no Asian countries measured besides India and Russia?

Apparently there is only a single country from the list where Google is not the first player: Russia (Yandex). China and most Asia are not listed.

And the only country where Google has less than 90% market share and the 2nd options is not Bing: Czechia (Seznam).

Other countries with less that 90% Google market share are: Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland, United States (Bing)

> The strategy we use relies on the referer header we see when we get an HTTP/S request.

This is interesting data but is not really a useful estimate of search engine market share in 2025.

It's very nice to see all the details. Two things came to my attention. In countries like Turkey or Eastern European ones, Google adoption doesn't change regardless of what platform they are on, pushing nearly 90% on every device. In the USA, Windows users actually prefer Bing a little more.

Does this mean other countries are better at using computers/more conscious users, and changing the default search engine/browser? It might be related to Edge being the default for Windows computers, but this is overridden by the users in other countries. Or is it because Microsoft is pushing more ads and is trusted more in the USA?

The second question is how much OpenAI disrupted the overall Google traffic. That's probably the most important metric anyone wants to see.