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# Not just ChatGPT: Gemini and Claude are growing. Which AI engines to focus on in 2026 > ChatGPT fell from 76% to 53-55% of chatbot visits, Gemini is at 26%, Claude at 9%. The 2026 data and a method to decide which AI engines to monitor. URL: https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/non-solo-chatgpt-gemini-claude-crescono-quali-motori-ai-monitorare-2026 Language: English Version IT: https://geosnap.ai/blog/non-solo-chatgpt-gemini-claude-crescono-quali-motori-ai-monitorare-2026 Author: Rinald Sefa, CMO Geosnap · Category: GEO strategy Publisher: Geosnap (Maind Group S.r.l.), https://geosnap.ai ## In short Between June 2025 and August 2026, ChatGPT's share of web visits to AI chatbots fell from about 76% to 55% according to Similarweb, while Gemini rose to 25-27% and Claude to 9%. The traffic assistants send to websites has shifted too: in a B2B panel ChatGPT went from 89% to 63% of AI referrals. Monitoring only ChatGPT today means missing at least a third of the answers where your brand can appear or be absent. - Similarweb: ChatGPT from 76% (June 2025) to 53% (May 2026) of chatbot web visits, 55.5% in August 2026; Gemini 25.6%, Claude 9.3%, Perplexity 0.9%. ChatGPT's absolute visits are flat: the market grew around it. - In Goodie's B2B GA4 panel, ChatGPT's share of AI referrals fell from 89.1% to 62.6%; Claude is at 18.5% and Gemini at 10.6%. A B2B panel tends to overindex on Claude and Perplexity. - AI traffic is still small (about 0.24% of internet traffic in January 2026) but its sessions are more engaged than organic search ones. - Gemini is a quarter of visits and does not behave like ChatGPT: platforms disagree on the recommended brand in 27.2% of questions. - Pick the engines to monitor from your own GA4 data and your audience type; keep the same prompts on at least two engines and take care of your homepage, where six in ten ChatGPT referrals land. Written by the Geosnap AI agent, reviewed and approved by Rinald Sefa. Translated from the Italian original. [Read the original](https://geosnap.ai/blog/non-solo-chatgpt-gemini-claude-crescono-quali-motori-ai-monitorare-2026) If you check how your brand shows up in AI answers today, you almost certainly do it on ChatGPT. That makes sense: it is still the most used engine. But in 2026 its share of visits dropped by more than twenty points, Gemini settled in as a solid number two and Claude grew fast. If you only watch ChatGPT, you see a shrinking part of the picture. Here are the latest figures, the caveats you need to read them with, and a method for deciding which engines deserve your monitoring and your content work. ## How much has ChatGPT's share changed in 2026? It fell from about 76% of web visits to generative AI chatbots to about 53% in twelve months. That is [Similarweb's](https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/gen-ai-stats/) summary of its data from June 2025 to May 2026: over the same period Gemini went from under 9% to 27-28%, and Claude from about 2% to almost 9%. The detail that matters is that ChatGPT's visits in absolute terms stayed [roughly flat](https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/gen-ai-stats/): it did not lose users, the market grew around it. Total monthly visits to chatbots rose 70% year over year, to 9.5 billion. Summer data confirms the trend, with a small rebound. In August 2026, according to Similarweb figures [reported by The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com/chatgpt-claws-back-web-traffic-share-to-55-5-percent-as-geminis-brief-comeback-fades/), ChatGPT held 55.5% of chatbot web traffic (73.3% a year earlier), Gemini 25.6%, Claude 9.3% (1.9% a year earlier), DeepSeek 3.4%, Grok 2.4%, Copilot 1.6% and Perplexity 0.9%. A September 2026 Similarweb primer for investors, [read by PPC Land](https://ppc.land/claude-gains-540-in-visits-with-0-46-from-paid-traffic-similarweb-finds/), gives similar numbers across six sites: chatgpt.com 57.2% (79.3% a year earlier), gemini.google.com 26.5%, claude.ai 9.6%, with 950 million monthly visits to claude.ai against 148 million twelve months before. | Engine | Share of web visits, August 2025 | Share of web visits, August 2026 | | --- | --- | --- | | ChatGPT | 73.3% | 55.5% | | Gemini | about 10% | 25.6% | | Claude | 1.9% | 9.3% | | DeepSeek, Grok, Copilot, Perplexity | the rest | 3.4% · 2.4% · 1.6% · 0.9% | Source: Similarweb via The Decoder and PPC Land. These are website visits: mobile apps and desktop clients are excluded, the 2025 Gemini figure comes from the six-site comparison in the September primer (9.8%), and Similarweb itself notes that this is [not a market-share figure](https://ppc.land/claude-gains-540-in-visits-with-0-46-from-paid-traffic-similarweb-finds/) in the strict sense. ## Does the traffic reaching websites follow the same curve? Yes, and in some sectors the redistribution is even sharper. The [Goodie study](https://higoodie.com/blog/ai-search-traffic-report-2026/), based on a GA4 panel of mostly B2B brands (41 sites and 2.8 million AI sessions in the first wave), measures each engine's share of the visits that AI assistants send to websites, giving every brand the same weight. Between May-August 2025 and March-April 2026, ChatGPT fell from 89.1% to 62.6% of AI referrals, Claude rose from 1.4% to 18.5%, Gemini from 2.4% to 10.6%, and Perplexity from 3.1% to 7.3%. The authors themselves warn that a B2B panel [may overindex](https://higoodie.com/blog/ai-search-traffic-report-2026/) on audiences that use Claude and Perplexity: on an online shop or a travel site, Gemini's share will probably be higher and Claude's lower. Two figures help keep things in proportion. First: outbound visits from Gemini grew 388% in a year against 52% for ChatGPT, according to Similarweb data [reported by Digital Applied](https://www.digitalapplied.com/blog/ai-referral-traffic-share-2026-gemini-chatgpt-geo-analysis), but that is growth in volume, not in share of the pie. Second: all chatbots together accounted for about 0.24% of global internet traffic in January 2026. AI traffic is still small in absolute terms; what is changing is its composition, and the fact that these visits are good ones: in the Goodie panel a session from Gemini lasts 62 seconds on average with a 72% engagement rate, one from ChatGPT 61 seconds and 69.7%, against 44 seconds and 61.8% for Google organic search. ## Why does Gemini matter more than it seems? Because it is the second engine by visits, it belongs to Google and it does not behave like ChatGPT. Gemini and Google AI Mode share the same company, the same index and much of the same ecosystem (Android, Chrome, Workspace): for many people they are the closest thing to traditional search when they want to ask an AI a question. But the sources they cite and the brands they name do not match ChatGPT's. In the volatility data we collected in [this article](https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/risposte-ai-cambiano-ogni-settimana-brand-volatilita-dati-2026), platforms disagree on the recommended brand in 27.2% of questions, and Gemini is the engine where the first brand cited changes most often from one week to the next (61.2% of cases). In practice: if your brand shows up well on ChatGPT, you have no guarantee it shows up on Gemini, and the other way round. A 25-27% share is not a footnote, it is a quarter of all browser visits to AI assistants. The same goes, to a lesser degree, for Claude: a 9% share of web visits, up fivefold in a year, concentrated on a [more work-oriented and technical audience](https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/chatgpt-vs-gemini-vs-claude-vs-perplexity/) according to Similarweb, is relevant to anyone selling software, B2B services or consulting. ## Which AI engines should you monitor? The ones your audience actually uses, measured with your own data rather than global averages. The method has three steps. 1. **Look at the split in your GA4.** Filter sessions by source: chatgpt.com, gemini.google.com, claude.ai, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com. If you have not set it up yet, [here is how to group all AI traffic](https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/traffico-da-chatgpt-come-misurarlo-google-analytics-4) into a single channel and read it by source. Three months of data is enough to see the proportions. 2. **Cross it with your type of audience.** Consumers, travel, home, health, local services: ChatGPT and Gemini cover almost all the questions, and Gemini weighs more than average. Software, professional services, technical purchases: ChatGPT is still first, but Claude and Perplexity count for much more, as Goodie's B2B panel shows. 3. **Monitor at least two engines, always with the same prompts.** The question is not "are we on ChatGPT?" but "in what share of answers do we appear, per engine, over time". A single answer on a single engine is an anecdote. Geosnap runs this repeated check on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode with the same prompts, so the difference between engines becomes data rather than an impression. ## What changes in your content when there is more than one engine? Little in substance, a lot in priorities. Assistants reward the same things: pages that answer a precise question, verifiable data, up-to-date information, brand and product names written consistently. But this year's data highlights one specific point: according to Similarweb, about [six in ten visits sent by ChatGPT](https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/gen-ai-stats/) land on the homepage, after ChatGPT started linking brands' homepages more often than inner pages in May 2026. Your homepage therefore has to say in a few seconds what you do, for whom and where, and lead to your service pages in one click. The second point is about citations. Similarweb also measures that the share of US ChatGPT prompts with at least one citation went from 1.6% in June 2025 to 6.8% in May 2026, with big differences by sector: about 23% in travel, 20% in automotive, [under 4% in professional services](https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/gen-ai-stats/). If you work in a sector where citations are rare, a brand mention in the answer text is worth more than a link, and should be monitored as such. Finally, when comparing engines, do not try to "optimise for Gemini" or "for Claude" with separate pages: build one good page, then check engine by engine where it is missing and why, and fix the sources (reviews, listings, comparison pages, directories) that that engine relies on more than the others. ## Sources - [AI Search Stats 2026: Market Share, Referral, and Citation Data](https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/gen-ai-stats/) (Similarweb, 2026-09-17) - [ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini vs Perplexity: what 2026 usage data actually shows](https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/chatgpt-vs-gemini-vs-claude-vs-perplexity/) (Similarweb, 2026-09-17) - [ChatGPT claws back web traffic share to 55.5 percent as Gemini's brief comeback fades](https://the-decoder.com/chatgpt-claws-back-web-traffic-share-to-55-5-percent-as-geminis-brief-comeback-fades/) (The Decoder, 2026-09-07) - [Claude gains 540% in visits with 0.46% from paid traffic, Similarweb finds](https://ppc.land/claude-gains-540-in-visits-with-0-46-from-paid-traffic-similarweb-finds/) (PPC Land, 2026-09-25) - [2026 AI Search Traffic Report: ChatGPT's Grip Slipped, Claude & Gemini Are Surging](https://higoodie.com/blog/ai-search-traffic-report-2026/) (Goodie, 2026-08-03) - [AI Referral Traffic 2026: Gemini Is Catching ChatGPT](https://www.digitalapplied.com/blog/ai-referral-traffic-share-2026-gemini-chatgpt-geo-analysis) (Digital Applied, 2026-06-15) ## Frequently asked questions ### Is ChatGPT losing users? No. Similarweb writes that visits to ChatGPT stayed roughly flat in absolute terms between June 2025 and May 2026: its share fell because Gemini and Claude grew a lot and total chatbot visits rose 70%. In August 2026 ChatGPT even regained a few points, from 52.7% to 55.5%. ### Should I monitor Claude and Perplexity too? It depends on your audience. In Similarweb's data Claude is 9% of web visits and Perplexity under 1%, but in Goodie's B2B panel they rise to 18.5% and 7.3% of the visits sent to websites. If you sell software, professional services or technical products, keep an eye on them; for a consumer audience ChatGPT and Gemini cover almost everything. Today Geosnap analyses ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode; Perplexity and Claude are coming. ### How do I see which AI engine sends me the most visits? In Google Analytics 4, filter sessions by source: chatgpt.com, gemini.google.com, claude.ai, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com. Some visits arrive without a referrer and end up in Direct, so the figures are a lower bound. A custom channel group for AI traffic makes the comparison between engines readable over time. ### Are Gemini and Google AI Mode the same thing? No, but both belong to Google and share its index and ecosystem. Gemini is the assistant (app and gemini.google.com), AI Mode is the conversational mode inside Google Search. A brand should monitor both: the sources and brands they cite can differ from ChatGPT's and, in part, from each other. ### Do I need different pages for each AI engine? No. Assistants reward the same traits: direct answers, verifiable data, up-to-date information, consistent names. The difference lies in the sources each engine leans on most, such as reviews, directories or comparison pages. Build one good page, then check engine by engine where it is missing and fix the external sources that weigh on that engine.
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