Top 10 Search Engines in 2025 That Go Beyond Google

Like most people, I used to Google everything without thinking twice.

Need a recipe? Google. Random trivia at 2 a.m.? Google again. It was the default, until I realized something big: Google isn’t the only search engine in town.

There’s a whole world of search engines doing things differently, and in some cases, better. Tighter privacy, smarter AI, cleaner interfaces. Some of the Google alternatives and the most used search engines genuinely surprised me.

Meanwhile, AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity are changing how we search by answering questions directly, often faster than traditional engines. We’re no longer just typing keywords and clicking links. We’re chatting, prompting, and expecting curated, instant answers so much so that some people have started wondering: Where are people actually searching in 2025? Is Google’s reign finally at risk?

So I dug into the data, looking at market share, traffic trends, user behavior, and the standout features shaping today’s top platforms.

In this article, you’ll find the top 10 search engines ranked by market share, traffic, and usage, backed by stats, not just opinions.

What are the top 10 search engines in the world?

As of 2025, the top 10 search engines in the world, ranked by market share, are:

Note: The market share figures presented here are based on StatCounter data. These rankings reflect traditional search engines and do not account for emerging AI search tools or platform-specific search experiences. 

Top 10 search engines in 2025

Search engines help us look things up online, or that’s what I thought, so. But as I went a little deeper, I could see that each one reflects something bigger: how we search, what we care about, and what we expect from the internet when we ask a question.

And now, in 2025, those expectations have shifted. Privacy matters more than ever. Some of us prefer AI-powered answers. Some don’t. Others want to search in their own language, on platforms built for their region or values. The way we search is personal, and it’s evolving fast.

In this section, I’ll list the most popular search engines shaping how people find information today, ranked by usage, market share, traffic, and relevance.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

1. Google

With 89.66% of the global search market share, Google remains the undisputed leader in 2025. It dominates as the most used search engine in nearly every region, except China and Russia, where local players Baidu and Yandex lead. 

On desktop, Google commands 79.4% of the market, and on mobile, it soars to 93.8%, showing just how deeply embedded it is in our everyday browsing habits.

It’s a far cry from its humble beginnings. Back in 1998, when Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched Google, its homepage promoted monthly email updates and boasted a modest index of 25 million pages. Today, it’s the go-to gateway to the internet for billions.

Google’s prototype homepage from 1998; Source: Wayback Machine

What keeps Google on top? It's lightning-fast results, vast index, and seamless integration across its ecosystem — YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Android, and more. For most users, it’s the default search engine. 

According to Similarweb data, Google saw over 81 billion visits in April 2025, making it one of the most frequently used websites on the planet. It accounts for 83% of the search engine market in terms of total traffic share. On average, people spent about 10 and a half minutes on the site and clicked through nearly nine pages each time they visited. 

That’s not just a reflection of dominance; it’s a sign of deep, habitual usage. We don’t say “search it,” we say “Google it.”

Interestingly, 19 percent of this traffic came from the U.S., while India accounted for 8.2 percent. This highlights how Google’s footprint spans both mature and rapidly growing internet markets. 

It’s not just about how many people use Google, it’s about how often they rely on it, every second of every day.

Not everyone searches the same way. SparkToro’s analysis of U.S. users found that:

• 30% make just 1–20 searches per month
  
  
• 1% search over 1,000 times monthly
  
  
• The largest group, 20.2%, searches between 101 and 250 times per month

So while Google’s dominance is undeniable, actual search behavior varies more than we might think.

Source: SparkToro

2025 hasn’t been without its challenges for Google. It’s AI Overviews, powered by Gemini, rolled out widely this year. This feature, which summarizes answers at the top of search results, now reaches 1.5 billion users per month. It is also rolling out AI Mode, a more interactive, conversational experience designed to guide users through multi-step queries using natural language in the U.S.

While the company frames it as the future of search, blending traditional results with AI-generated summaries, the response has been mixed. Some users appreciate the conversational answers. Others find the experience cluttered or question the trustworthiness of the summaries, especially after a few high-profile misfires. 

There's also growing criticism around ad saturation, with organic results often pushed far below the fold. And while Google has made some privacy improvements, it continues to face regulatory pressure and ongoing skepticism about how user data is handled.

In a subtle but telling shift, Google’s search market share dipped below 90% for the first time at the end of 2024 and continues to do so. It’s not a collapse, but in an industry where Google has long been untouchable, it’s worth watching.

For now, thanks to its speed, reach, and familiar structure, Google remains the heavyweight champion of search. However, with AI reshaping how people interact with information, its once-unshakable lead may no longer be guaranteed.

2. Bing

Let’s be honest: Bing wasn’t exactly the search engine people got excited about. Launched by Microsoft in 2009 to replace Live Search, it spent most of the last decade as the quiet alternative to Google. Solid? Sure. Popular? Not really.

But then 2023 happened.

Screenshot of Bing search engine

After years of hovering around 2–3% global market share, Bing saw a real bump thanks to the launch of Bing Chat, now called Copilot. It was the first major search engine to bring generative AI directly into the search experience. Suddenly, Bing wasn’t just playing catch-up. It was leading the conversation.

By 2025, Bing holds 3.88% of global search market share. That might still sound small, but it tells a story of steady growth. The engine does especially well on desktop, where it grabs 11.73% of the market, mostly thanks to its deep integration with Windows 11 and Microsoft Edge. On mobile, it’s a different story, with just 0.64%, showing how much it still depends on the PC ecosystem.

Geographically, Bing’s strongest numbers come from North America, where it holds 7.36% overall, including 7.5% in the U.S. In Europe, it captures 4.1%, with 3.9% in the U.K.. In Asia, it struggles to gain ground, just 2.35%, including 1.3% in India, highlighting its relatively limited global reach compared to Google.

According to Similarweb, Bing saw 1.4 billion visits in April 2025, accounting for 1.44% of global search engine traffic. Users spent about seven and a half minutes per visit and clicked through 5.44 pages — lower than Google, but still notable for a longtime underdog.

And Microsoft’s AI bet? It’s working.

Microsoft shared key milestones about Bing after its AI chatbot rollout:

• 100 million daily active users on Bing (March 2023)
  
  
• Over 1 billion chats and 750 million AI-generated images within six months of the launch (August 2023)

While Google later responded with its own AI chatbot, Gemini, AIOs, and AI Mode, Bing’s first-mover advantage gave it a measurable, if still modest, boost in attention. The fact that Bing remains the default search engine on millions of Windows PCs, and is deeply integrated into Windows and Microsoft Edge, continues to give it a baked-in distribution edge, particularly among casual or enterprise users.

It’s still far from threatening Google’s dominance, but in a search world reshaped by AI, Bing finally has something it hasn’t had in years: momentum.

3. Yandex

With 2.53% of global search market share, Yandex is now the third most-used search engine in the world, recently overtaking Yahoo, even though it’s mostly used in just one part of the world. Its strength comes almost entirely from Russia and neighboring countries, where it’s deeply woven into everyday internet use.

Screenshot of Yandex search engine

Founded in 1997, even before Google launched, Yandex has long been a pioneer in search. Today, it still leads the Russian search market by a wide margin, holding 75.25%, while Google trails far behind at 22.83%. Russia remains one of the few major markets where Google isn’t in control.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

Often called the “Google of Russia,” Yandex offers much more than search. It has its own ecosystem of services: maps, email, cloud storage, translation tools, and smart assistants, all designed specifically for Russian users and their cultural context.

Its biggest advantage? Localization. Yandex’s algorithm is built to understand Cyrillic script and the unique nuances of the Russian language, giving it a serious edge for native queries. Add to that its investment in AI and machine learning, and you’ve got a platform that powers everything from personalized recommendations to voice tools and digital assistants. For many users, Yandex isn’t just a search engine. It’s their entire online experience.

Globally, Yandex holds 2.97% of desktop search and 2.35% on mobile, making it one of the more balanced search engines across devices, especially compared to Bing, which is far more desktop-heavy.

According to Similarweb, Yandex’s Russian homepage had 2.79 billion visits in April 2025. Visitors spent an average of 8 minutes and 28 seconds per session, clicking through more than 8.5 pages per visit. By traffic volume, Yandex gets 2.58% of global search engine traffic.

In a world dominated by U.S. tech giants, Yandex shows that a local player, with the right tools and focus, can still hold its own globally.

4. Yahoo

My first email address? Yahoo. And if my memory serves me right, I used to Yahoo things before "Googling" was even a thing. But now? Not a lot. I haven’t used Yahoo Search in years, and I’m not alone.

Screenshot of Yahoo search engine

Once the go-to web portal and a top search engine in the early 2000s, Yahoo’s influence in search has faded hard. Today, it holds just 1.32% of the global search engine market share, putting it in 4th place behind Google, Bing, and Yandex. 

It does slightly better on desktop, where it has a 2.93% share, just behind Yandex. But on mobile, it barely registers a 0.69% market share, a sign of how much it's fallen behind in a mobile-first world.

Yahoo Search is now powered by Bing through a long-standing partnership with Microsoft. It serves a loyal (and often older) user base who land there via the Yahoo homepage, or stick around for Yahoo Mail, Finance, News, and other familiar portals.

Interestingly, Yahoo remains unusually popular in Japan, where Yahoo Japan operates as a separate company and continues to dominate as a search and portal service. It holds 9.17% of the search engine market in Japan, second only to Google, which leads with 80.5%. In fact, Yahoo Japan (yahoo.co.jp) is the 10th most visited website globally, according to Similarweb, even outpacing yahoo.com. In the U.S. and other markets, Yahoo’s share is much smaller, though some loyal users still use Yahoo.com for search out of habit.

And it's not all tumbleweeds. Yahoo pulls in 3.09 billion visits every month, as of April 2025. The average user spent 7 minutes and 17 seconds per visit and clicked through 5.34 pages, respectable engagement for a legacy brand.

More than half of Yahoo’s traffic (51%) comes from the U.S., with Taiwan (4.6%) and the UK (4%) rounding out the top markets. And here's a fun twist: 5.4% of Yahoo’s traffic ends up going straight to Google.com, likely from users typing queries into the homepage search box, only to bounce to the search engine they really wanted to use.

Yahoo might not be leading the pack anymore, but its legacy as a household internet name and its familiar interface still give it just enough momentum to stay on the global leaderboard.

5. DuckDuckGo

If you’ve ever searched for something online and immediately seen ads for it on Instagram, you’ve probably wished your searches were just... private. That’s exactly the problem DuckDuckGo set out to solve.

Launched in 2008, DuckDuckGo is now the fifth most-used search engine in the world, with 0.84% of global market share. It performs slightly better on desktop (1.07%) than on mobile (0.74%).

Screenshot from DuckDuckGo search engine

It’s made the global top five by doing one thing really well: protecting user privacy. It doesn’t track you, store your search history, or build a data profile around your activity. Searching on DuckDuckGo is completely anonymous — privacy by design, not as an added feature.

DuckDuckGo pulls in results from a variety of trusted sources, including Microsoft’s Bing index, Wikipedia, Apple Maps, and its own web crawler. It doesn’t create a filter bubble, and it doesn’t personalize results based on your past searches, so everyone sees the same thing for the same query. That’s a feature, not a flaw.

According to DuckDuckGo, the engine handles about 3 billion searches per month, which breaks down to:

• 100 million searches per day
  
  
• 69,000+ searches per minute
  
  
• Around 1,157 per second
  

As of 2022, the company had passed 100 billion total searches, and it now estimates that over 100 million people use the platform globally.

That user base is clearly reflected in third-party SEO tools, too. Similarweb data shows that that DuckDuckGo saw 713.7 million visits in April 2025. Users on average spend 7 minutes and 47 seconds per visit and click through 6.33 pages, a strong engagement for a search engine that doesn’t track or personalize.

Much of that traffic comes from privacy-conscious users in the U.S. (46%), followed by Germany (8.3%) and India (6.6%), where interest in anonymous browsing continues to grow.

It’s not aiming to dethrone Google. But for users who care more about anonymity than AI or convenience, DuckDuckGo is the go-to alternative for a privacy-focused search engine, and its numbers prove there's a real demand for search that doesn’t watch you back.

6. Baidu

If Yandex is the “Google of Russia,” then Baidu is undoubtedly the “Google of China.” With 0.72% of global search engine market share, Baidu may seem like a niche player, but its scale in China tells a different story.

Screenshot from Baidu search engine

Founded in Beijing in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu, Baidu has grown into the dominant search engine in China. Although it is used almost exclusively within one country, it consistently ranks among the top global search engines by query volume, thanks to the sheer size of its user base.

In China, Baidu commands 53.1% of the domestic search market, far ahead of Bing’s 26% there. Globally, its presence is much smaller. Most of Baidu’s services are geo-restricted and available only in Chinese, limiting their accessibility outside mainland China. It holds 0.62% of desktop and 0.64% of mobile market share worldwide — modest, but fairly balanced across platforms.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

Still, Baidu’s scale within China is massive. As of December 2024, the company had around 679 million monthly active users on its app, underscoring its strong hold on the local market.

That reach shows up in web traffic, too. According to Similarweb, Baidu’s main site received 2.15 billion visits in April 2025, making it the third most-visited search engine in the world in terms of traffic. Users spent an average of 5 minutes and 27 seconds per visit and viewed 8.76 pages, a sign of strong engagement.

Unsurprisingly, that traffic is heavily concentrated in China. Nearly 95% of Baidu’s traffic comes from China, with smaller shares from Hong Kong (1.4%), Taiwan (1.15%), and less than 1% from the U.S. 

Baidu may not be a global player in the traditional sense, but within China, it remains the undisputed gateway to the internet.

7. Naver

With a global search engine market share of 0.33% as of January 2025, according to Statista, South Korea’s Naver might seem like a small player globally, but inside its home market, it’s anything but.

Screenshot from Naver search engine

Naver holds 48.4% of South Korea’s search engine market and is responsible for roughly half of all searches in the country. Its share has hovered between 40% to 50% in recent years, closely competing with Google. Outside of Korea, however, Naver is barely used, making it a uniquely regional powerhouse.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

What sets Naver apart is its portal-style, content-rich approach. The search experience is designed less like Google’s minimalist model and more like a full-fledged ecosystem. Search results are divided into segments like blogs, questions and answers, news, images, videos, and more. It leans heavily on user-generated content, especially through Naver Blogs and Cafes (community forums), which often dominate results for local queries.

Naver’s homepage is a destination in itself. In addition to the search bar, it features trending topics, web comics (webtoons), shopping feeds, and entertainment news, all tailored to Korean user behavior. It’s not just a search engine; it’s a curated internet experience that fits how South Koreans consume content online.

And that all-in-one experience clearly resonates with users. According to Similarweb, Naver recorded 1.59 billion visits in April 2025, with users spending an average of 16 minutes and 36 seconds per visit and clicking through 11.85 pages — some of the highest engagement metrics among search engines.

Unsurprisingly, most of Naver’s traffic comes from South Korea, accounting for about 96%, with a small slice from the U.S. (1.5%) and less than 1% from Japan, China, and Indonesia.

While Naver’s global footprint is limited, its deep integration into Korean digital life and South Korea’s high internet penetration ensure that it remains a top 10 search engine worldwide and a lasting force in one of the most connected markets on the planet.

8. Ecosia

I don’t usually think of web searches as doing much good, but Ecosia challenges that assumption.

With just 0.11% of global search engine market share, Ecosia is a small player overall, yet it stands out as one of the most distinctive search engines out there. That uniqueness has earned it a spot in the top 10 search engines.

Screenshot from Ecosia search engine

It’s especially popular in Europe, where it holds 0.36% of the market, thanks to its reputation as the “tree-planting search engine.”

Ecosia runs on Microsoft Bing’s and Google’s search technology to serve users' search results and ads, but it puts the majority of its ad revenue toward reforestation efforts around the world. According to the company, it has planted over 232 million trees so far. For someone like me who cares about environmental impact, that shift in purpose makes the experience feel more intentional. You’re not just searching. You’re contributing to something bigger.

And that mission has clearly attracted a loyal audience. As of 2025, Ecosia reports around 20 million users worldwide. According to Similarweb, it saw 206.1 million visits in April 2025, with users spending an average of 5 minutes and 34 seconds per visit and browsing 3.94 pages per session.

Not surprisingly, most of that traffic comes from Europe. Germany (22.7 percent) and France (22.6 percent) lead the way, followed by the United States (12 percent) and the United Kingdom (10.5 percent).

So no, it’s not competing with Google or Bing on size, but if you want your searches to do a little good, Ecosia makes a compelling case.

9. AOL

Surprise, surprise: AOL is still around. And not only that, it still gets traffic. A lot more than you'd think.

Once known as America Online, AOL was the face of the internet in the '90s and early 2000s. Today, it holds just 0.09% of the U.S. search engine market. But that’s still (barely) enough to keep it within the global top 10.

Screenshot from AOL website

According to Similarweb, AOL saw 296.2 million visits in April 2025. Visitors spent an average of 9 minutes and 41 seconds on the site, browsing 8.04 pages per session. A massive 86.2% of that traffic came from the U.S., with the U.K. (5.2%) and Germany (3%) trailing behind.

Nearly 3% of AOL’s outbound traffic goes straight to Google, which tells you people still start there, even if they don’t stay.

AOL’s search engine is powered by Bing, and the experience is basic at best. It’s not really a place people go to search anymore. Most users arrive at AOL.com for news, lifestyle content, or to check their AOL Mail. The homepage feels more like a web portal than a search engine, which makes sense given AOL’s roots.

I hadn’t typed “aol.com” into a browser in years, but clearly, plenty of people still do. And in a search world dominated by AI and mobile-first design, it’s kind of fascinating that this relic of the early internet is still hanging on.

10. Seznam

You might not have heard of Seznam unless you’re from Czech Republic. But for a time, it was a serious competitor to Google on its home turf.

Screenshot from Seznam search engine

In April 2025, Seznam’s main site saw 214 million visits, accounting for 0.48% of global search engine traffic by visits. That makes it the 7th most visited search engine in the world, excluding regional Google domains like google.de.

It’s a Czech search engine and web portal that once dominated the country’s search landscape. In the early 2000s, it was the default choice for Czech users — familiar, local, and better suited for Czech-language content than global platforms. 

Even today, around 12 percent of searches in the Czech Republic still happen on Seznam, with the rest split mostly between Google, Bing, and Yandex. On desktop, its share is even stronger, sitting at 14.6%, while on mobile it holds 10.56%. A proof that it’s still a meaningful player locally, even if it’s faded elsewhere.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

Globally, though, Seznam’s footprint is small. It holds less than 0.1 percent of the global search market share, making its presence negligible outside Czechia and, to a smaller extent, Slovakia. Still, its local focus has helped it maintain relevance, especially among older generations who grew up with the platform.

Part of what makes Seznam stick is its ecosystem. It’s more than just a search engine — it offers Seznam Email, a popular news site (Seznam Zprávy), a Czech-focused map service (Mapy.com), and more. Its search results are straightforward, covering web content, images, videos, and directory listings, with an emphasis on local relevance.

But Seznam’s dominance has slipped over the past decade. As Google’s Czech-language support improved and Android smartphones with Google as the default search became ubiquitous, more users made the switch. Seznam still hangs on as one of the top 10 search engines globally, but just barely tied with other minor players at the bottom of the list.

According to Similarweb, Seznam’s main site saw 214 million visits in April 2025. It accounted for 0.48% of global search engine traffic by visits, making it the 7th most visited search engine in the world, excluding Google’s regional domains like google.co.in or google.de.

The average visit lasted 9 minutes and 3 seconds, with users viewing about 6.14 pages per session. Most of its traffic (96.7 percent) comes from Czechia, with small shares from Slovakia (0.83 percent) and minimal usage from Germany, the UK, or the US.

Honorable mentions

Apart from the major players listed above, there are a few more search engines that, while not making it into the global top 10 most-used or popular search engines, still serve niche audiences or specific purposes:

• Qwant: A privacy-focused search engine based in France, known for not tracking users or selling data. Popular among some European users, especially in France.
• Startpage: Based in the Netherlands, it offers Google search results but strips out all personal identifiers — essentially a privacy-first wrapper around Google.
• Brave Search: Developed by the team behind the Brave browser, this engine is building its own independent index while emphasizing privacy and transparency.
• Swisscows: A family-friendly and privacy-oriented search engine based in Switzerland, with its own semantic indexing approach.

Top 5 AI search engines: ChatGPT, Deepseek, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity

While we’ve just covered the top 10 traditional search engines and other non-search engines that are used as search software, it’s clear that the way people search is evolving fast. 

AI search engines like Perplexity.ai and chatbots like ChatGPT, Deepseek, and Google’s own Gemini may not show up in market share charts just yet, but they’re changing user behavior in meaningful ways.

AI search vs traditional search: What the numbers say

As this shift unfolds, broader traffic patterns tell an interesting story. Here are some data from the analysis by OneLittleWeb:

• AI chatbots saw explosive growth over the past year, with traffic rising nearly 81% between April 2024 and March 2025, adding up to 55.2 billion visits.
  
  
• In contrast, search engine traffic dipped slightly, falling 0.51% year-over-year to a total of 1.86 trillion visits during the same period.
  
  
• Still, the gap is vast. Over the years, AI chatbots accounted for just 2.96% of the total traffic generated by traditional search engines.
• That disparity becomes even clearer when we look at daily usage. In March 2025, search engines averaged 5.5 billion visits per day, while AI chatbots drew only 233.1 million — a nearly 24-fold difference in engagement.

Source: OneLittleWeb

As mentioned earlier, AI assistants aren’t replacing search engines like Google outright, but they are shifting how we ask questions, explore topics, and find answers. They don’t return a list of links. Instead, they try to understand the intent behind your query and deliver a direct, synthesized response, often complete with context, citations, or follow-up suggestions.

And, the numbers speak to their growing momentum. 

Let’s take a closer look at five of the most popular AI tools to see how each one is carving out its place in the evolving search landscape.

1. ChatGPT

With over 5.14 billion visits in April 2025, ChatGPT is no longer just a chatbot. It’s a major web destination. It ranked as the 5th most visited website in the world, according to Similarweb's April data. Users spend an average of 7 minutes and 15 seconds per session and view 4.15 pages per visit. 

Screenshot from ChatGPT

The scale of usage is staggering. The AI chatbot handles 1 billion messages per day and has an estimated 600 million monthly active users, a staggering rise that unfolded rapidly through 2023 and 2024.

But how much of that activity is “search-like”?

According to an analysis by SparkToro, about 30% of prompts sent to ChatGPT carry search intent. When you break down the math, that translates to approximately 37.5 million search-like prompts per day. That’s meaningful, but still a far cry from Google’s 13.7 billion searches per day, which makes Google roughly 373 times larger in terms of daily search volume.

It’s also telling that ChatGPT often functions as a gateway, not the final stop. 8.6% of its outbound traffic goes to YouTube, and 5.6% ends up on Google, showing that users frequently continue their journey elsewhere after getting an AI response.

Geographically, ChatGPT’s traffic is increasingly global. The U.S. leads with 15%, followed by India (9.2%), Brazil (4.9%), the U.K. (4.6%), and Indonesia (3.6%).

So while it’s not eating into Google’s dominance just yet, ChatGPT is shaping new habits. For a growing number of users, it’s becoming the first stop for brainstorming, quick summaries, or complex questions that go beyond what a typical search engine delivers. 

2. DeepSeek

DeepSeek might not have the name recognition of ChatGPT or Gemini, but it’s quickly making waves, ranking as the second most-visited AI chatbot by web traffic. 480.1 million people visit DeepSeek monthly, according to Similarweb data.

Screenshot from DeepSeek

It’s built by DeepSeek AI, a Chinese open-source lab, and runs entirely on open-source language models. People spend 4 minutes and 55 seconds with the AI chatbot website on average and see 3.42 pages per visit. 

What makes DeepSeek stand out? For starters, it’s completely free and fully open-source. That’s a big deal for developers, researchers, and anyone like me who wants a transparent alternative without paywalls or login friction. The interface is clean and chat-based, just like ChatGPT, built for multi-turn reasoning, inline citations, and speedy responses. It has 47 million daily active users, according to Statista. 

It may not have the bells and whistles of bigger players or the tight integrations across platforms, but it excels in delivering quick, research-style answers.

3. Gemini

Gemini, formerly known as Bard, is Google’s own conversational AI assistant—and it’s not just another chatbot. With over 350 million monthly users and 409.4 million visits in April 2025 alone, Gemini is quickly becoming central to how Google reimagines the future of search.

Screenshot from Gemini

What makes Gemini especially noteworthy is who’s behind it. As the world’s largest search engine, Google already controls how billions access information. With Gemini, it’s now layering generative AI directly on top of that search infrastructure — essentially blending smart, conversational answers with the reach and depth of traditional web results.

Although Gemini’s web traffic is tracked separately from Google Search, it’s not operating in isolation. It’s better seen as an AI-powered enhancement, not a replacement. From AI Overviews at the top of search results to deep integrations in Gmail, Docs, and other Workspace tools, Gemini is becoming the connective tissue that links user queries to smarter, faster, and more contextual answers across Google’s ecosystem.

On average, Gemini users spend 5 minutes and 25 seconds per session and view 3.43 pages per visit, showing that engagement runs deep, especially for a tool designed to answer more and link less.

And because it’s built by the same company that dominates global search traffic, Gemini isn’t just another tool chasing AI hype. It’s Google’s play to future-proof its dominance by shaping not just where people search, but how. In that sense, Gemini isn’t a challenger in the AI race. It’s the incumbent making sure they are part of the new challengers who rewrite the rules.

3. Grok

Grok is the AI assistant developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, and honestly, I was surprised to see it have millions in terms of traffic. I’ve seen a lot of engagement with Grok across X (formerly Twitter), but I didn’t expect it to be pulling in numbers at this scale.

Screenshot from Grok

As of April 2025, Grok recorded 196.1 million visits, with users spending an average of 6 minutes and 31 seconds per session and viewing 4.03 pages. That’s solid engagement for a tool that’s still relatively new in the AI space.

But Grok isn’t your typical search assistant. It’s built around real-time discovery, tapping into the X ecosystem to pull tweets, trending topics, and breaking news into a chat-style interface. It doesn’t aim to replace traditional search or serve up long-form research. It’s more about quick answers, live updates, and contextual info straight from the social web.

Its growth is likely driven more by platform synergy than standalone adoption. But for people already active on X, Grok is becoming a convenient sidekick, blending casual queries with the immediacy of social media.

5. Perplexity AI

Perplexity.ai positions itself as an “answer engine” — not just another chatbot like the other tools mentioned above, but a full-fledged alternative to traditional search engines like Google. From the beginning, its mission has been clear: deliver fast, accurate, and well-cited answers without making users sift through a list of links.

As of April 2025, Perplexity saw 113 million visits in a single month. 

Screenshot from Perplexity AI

What makes Perplexity stand out is how it handles complex questions. It generates clear, concise responses backed by citations, source links, and real-time web data. Users can toggle between quick summaries and detailed answer threads depending on how deep they want to go. On average, users spent 5 minutes and 44 seconds per session, clicking through 4.2 pages each time.

And it’s gaining momentum fast. According to the company, Perplexity now handles 100 million search queries per week, a striking number for a relatively young search platform. It’s redefining what modern search can look like: AI-first, source-aware, and designed for users who want answers, not just options. 

There are also several other AI assistants redefining how people find information online. Tools like Copilot by Microsoft, Claude by Anthropic, Meta AI, You.com, Pi by Inflection AI, and Mistral are all part of this growing landscape. 

While they may not yet match the traffic of ChatGPT or Gemini, they’re actively shaping how users interact with search-like experiences, offering everything from contextual Q&A to web-sourced summaries.

As the AI space matures, these platforms may play an increasingly important role in how search evolves beyond the traditional engine.

The future of search: Where are we headed?

When I started working on this article, I just wanted to figure out where people are actually searching in 2025 and whether anything’s really changing. 

What I found wasn’t a dramatic takeover, but something quieter and more interesting. The way we search is changing, even if the “where” hasn’t fully caught up yet. Google still dominates by a wide margin, but the edges are starting to fray. Niche engines are carving out loyal audiences. Privacy-first platforms are attracting mindful users. And AI tools? They’re pushing us to ask better questions and expect more thoughtful, context-rich answers.

We no longer have to default to the same box every time we need an answer. There are engines and assistants out there doing things differently — some smarter, some simpler, some just... more enjoyable.

Personally, I’ve started using different tools for different tasks. Need a quick, reliable summary? Perplexity. Looking for real-time reactions? Grok. Still leaning on the old reliable? That’s Google. But now it’s just one option in a broader toolkit. 

Maybe that’s what the future of search really looks like — not one homepage to rule them all, but many tools we choose depending on what we’re trying to find.

In the end, it’s not just about searching better. It’s about searching smarter and maybe even with a little more intention.

If you’re wondering how the people shaping this space are thinking about it all, don’t miss this conversation with Kevin Indig about the search in the age of AI.