5 ms·

Search engine referral report for 2025 Q2

122 points by vgeek 1y ago

pr337h4m 1y ago
> 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.
- entuno 1y ago
  And one that would understate privacy-focused search engines, because the people using those are far less likely to be sending useful referrers.
  - internetter 1y ago
    What search engines don't send referrer headers?
    - mdaniel 1y ago
      I was expecting DDG to be one of them (before I read the report), so I did some digging and it seems that they have <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/Referrer-Policy https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...> set to "origin", meaning it says that the request came from duckduckgo.com but nothing further <meta name="referrer" content="origin"> But, to answer your question, presumably a search engine that wanted to stay really under the radar could use that same mechanism to choose "no-referrer" and the traffic would seem organic (I also had a good chuckle at them choosing to break the typo chain with this directive)
    - entuno 1y ago
      Referrers (or cross-domain referrers) can be easily disabled in the browser - it's not just up to the search engine.
PaulKeeble 1y ago
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.
- cnst 1y ago
  It's not the same everywhere. Look at ru and cz, and note that cn and jp are missing from the list, where Google will likewise probably not be at the top.
  - hammock 1y ago
    There are zero Asian countries on this besides Russia and India. Thereby missing about 2 billion internet users
  - tokioyoyo 1y ago
    Pretty sure Google is the market leader is Japan. By far.
- ivape 1y ago
  What do you think most people use when they need a taxi now days? Humans believe the market is some kind of magical place where everyone gets a slice of the pie. This is not true, winners are a thing.
  - Semaphor 1y ago
    Over here, I'd say minicar or maxicar
  - aidenn0 1y ago
    Which is one reason why robust antitrust enforcement is necessary, yet most of the antitrust laws on the books have barely been enforced since the late 70s.
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    The taxi market is still pretty fragmented. Markets evolve in different ways depending on the nature of the goods and services being exchanged and the environment in which they operate.
freeqaz 1y ago
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.
system2 1y ago
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.
- ozgrakkurt 1y ago
  It could be because of culture. Turkish people have much stronger pack mentality and “do what everyone else does or else” perspective
epolanski 1y ago
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.
VladVladikoff 1y ago
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.
- highwaylights 1y ago
  If you go Google something right now you’re not doing a web search like you were even a year ago - the first thing that comes up (and takes up most of the screen depending on your device) is a Gemini response to your query. At the least it can be inferred that Google has fundamentally changed their main product to mimic a competitor, which is something you just don’t do if everything’s OK.
  - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
    > At the least it can be inferred that Google has fundamentally changed their main product to mimic a competitor, which is something you just don’t do if everything’s OK. I mean, the big thing that has changed is that investors are all in on AI, and Google looked like they were behind in this area, so they put it front and center so that they can talk nonsense about it on investor calls.
  - chaos_emergent 1y ago
    knowledge cards at the top of Google results have been around for at least 12 years, I'd interpret the LLM-based responses as an iteration of a feature that's been around for a while rather than mimicking a competitor.
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  > Especially if the query is complex (e.g. give me a summary of USAs current lunar missions and progress towards a lunar base.) This terrifies me. The number of ostensibly smart, curious people who now fill their knowledge gaps with pseudorandom information from LLMs that's accurate just often enough to lower mental guards. I'm not an idiot; I know most people never did the whole "check and corroborate multiple sources" thing. What actually happened in the average case was that a person delegated trust to a few parties who, in their view, aligned with their perspective. Still, that sounds infinitely preferable to "whatever OpenAI/Google/whoever's computer says is probably right". When people steelman using LLMs for knowledge gathering, they like to position it as a first step to break in on a topic, learn what there is to learn, which can then be followed by more specific research that uses actual sources. I posit that the portion of AI users actually following up that way is vanishingly small, smaller even than the portion of people who read multiple news sources and research the credibility of the publications. I value easy access to information very highly, but it seems like when people vote with their feet, eyes, and wallets that's not what you get. You get fast and easy, but totally unreliable information. The information landscape has never been great, but it seems to only get worse with each paradigm shift. I struggle to even imagine a hypothetical world where reliable information is easy to access. How do you scale that? How do you make it robust to attack or decay? Maybe the closest thing we have now is Wikipedia, is there something there that could be applied more broadly?
willahmad 1y ago
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?
- parhamn 1y ago
  Do you often ask questions that lead you to a link? I use LLMs heavily but still use google when looking for a link.
  - willahmad 1y ago
    Depends on the questions. If a technical problem, before my questions were leading either to official doc or stackoverflow, now I get possible solutions to try Other types of questions like reviews, product comparisons GPT shows couple of relevant links to reddit and I go check them to see if summary was right and then surf relevant subreddit. If I assign a number, I would say 80% of my requests lead to answers inside the GPT, other 20% lead to links
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  This is tracking opening links ? AI summarizes the content so you don't even have to visit the site.
  - willahmad 1y ago
    But they provide sources/links, which I click occasionally and they have utm source with chatgpt
    - rafaelmn 1y ago
      which explains the low number of those in stats
- wiredpancake 1y ago
  [flagged]
TexanFeller 1y ago
Kagi didn’t even make the list? I’ve completely switched away from Google and only use Kagi…
- Seattle3503 1y ago
  Sometimes you're in a bubble. I'm in some niche fiction communities, and we can get some really warped perceptions about what people like to read because we are so deep in our own niche.
- loveiswork 1y ago
  Kagi’s response headers make it such that they cannot be included in this report
- daveoc64 1y ago
  Kagi is very open about how many users they have: https://kagi.com/stats https://kagi.com/stats ~56,000 users spread across the entire world isn't going to move the needle when looking at the sort of statistics in the report.
hammock 1y ago
Why are there no Asian countries measured besides India and Russia?
thw_9a83c 1y ago
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)
euLh7SM5HDFY 1y ago
This is total domination, other engines are literal rounding errors. And this isn't a new thing. So it is weird that anti-monopol investigations into Google were so anemic so far.

122 points by vgeek 1y ago

> 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.

entuno 1y ago
And one that would understate privacy-focused search engines, because the people using those are far less likely to be sending useful referrers.
- internetter 1y ago
  What search engines don't send referrer headers?
  - mdaniel 1y ago
    I was expecting DDG to be one of them (before I read the report), so I did some digging and it seems that they have <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/Referrer-Policy https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...> set to "origin", meaning it says that the request came from duckduckgo.com but nothing further <meta name="referrer" content="origin"> But, to answer your question, presumably a search engine that wanted to stay really under the radar could use that same mechanism to choose "no-referrer" and the traffic would seem organic (I also had a good chuckle at them choosing to break the typo chain with this directive)
  - entuno 1y ago
    Referrers (or cross-domain referrers) can be easily disabled in the browser - it's not just up to the search engine.

PaulKeeble 1y ago

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.

cnst 1y ago
It's not the same everywhere. Look at ru and cz, and note that cn and jp are missing from the list, where Google will likewise probably not be at the top.
- hammock 1y ago
  There are zero Asian countries on this besides Russia and India. Thereby missing about 2 billion internet users
- tokioyoyo 1y ago
  Pretty sure Google is the market leader is Japan. By far.
ivape 1y ago
What do you think most people use when they need a taxi now days? Humans believe the market is some kind of magical place where everyone gets a slice of the pie. This is not true, winners are a thing.
- Semaphor 1y ago
  Over here, I'd say minicar or maxicar
- aidenn0 1y ago
  Which is one reason why robust antitrust enforcement is necessary, yet most of the antitrust laws on the books have barely been enforced since the late 70s.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  The taxi market is still pretty fragmented. Markets evolve in different ways depending on the nature of the goods and services being exchanged and the environment in which they operate.

freeqaz 1y ago

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.

system2 1y ago

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.

ozgrakkurt 1y ago
It could be because of culture. Turkish people have much stronger pack mentality and “do what everyone else does or else” perspective

epolanski 1y ago

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.

VladVladikoff 1y ago

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.

highwaylights 1y ago
If you go Google something right now you’re not doing a web search like you were even a year ago - the first thing that comes up (and takes up most of the screen depending on your device) is a Gemini response to your query. At the least it can be inferred that Google has fundamentally changed their main product to mimic a competitor, which is something you just don’t do if everything’s OK.
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  > At the least it can be inferred that Google has fundamentally changed their main product to mimic a competitor, which is something you just don’t do if everything’s OK. I mean, the big thing that has changed is that investors are all in on AI, and Google looked like they were behind in this area, so they put it front and center so that they can talk nonsense about it on investor calls.
- chaos_emergent 1y ago
  knowledge cards at the top of Google results have been around for at least 12 years, I'd interpret the LLM-based responses as an iteration of a feature that's been around for a while rather than mimicking a competitor.
idle_zealot 1y ago
> Especially if the query is complex (e.g. give me a summary of USAs current lunar missions and progress towards a lunar base.) This terrifies me. The number of ostensibly smart, curious people who now fill their knowledge gaps with pseudorandom information from LLMs that's accurate just often enough to lower mental guards. I'm not an idiot; I know most people never did the whole "check and corroborate multiple sources" thing. What actually happened in the average case was that a person delegated trust to a few parties who, in their view, aligned with their perspective. Still, that sounds infinitely preferable to "whatever OpenAI/Google/whoever's computer says is probably right". When people steelman using LLMs for knowledge gathering, they like to position it as a first step to break in on a topic, learn what there is to learn, which can then be followed by more specific research that uses actual sources. I posit that the portion of AI users actually following up that way is vanishingly small, smaller even than the portion of people who read multiple news sources and research the credibility of the publications. I value easy access to information very highly, but it seems like when people vote with their feet, eyes, and wallets that's not what you get. You get fast and easy, but totally unreliable information. The information landscape has never been great, but it seems to only get worse with each paradigm shift. I struggle to even imagine a hypothetical world where reliable information is easy to access. How do you scale that? How do you make it robust to attack or decay? Maybe the closest thing we have now is Wikipedia, is there something there that could be applied more broadly?

willahmad 1y ago

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?

parhamn 1y ago
Do you often ask questions that lead you to a link? I use LLMs heavily but still use google when looking for a link.
- willahmad 1y ago
  Depends on the questions. If a technical problem, before my questions were leading either to official doc or stackoverflow, now I get possible solutions to try Other types of questions like reviews, product comparisons GPT shows couple of relevant links to reddit and I go check them to see if summary was right and then surf relevant subreddit. If I assign a number, I would say 80% of my requests lead to answers inside the GPT, other 20% lead to links
rafaelmn 1y ago
This is tracking opening links ? AI summarizes the content so you don't even have to visit the site.
- willahmad 1y ago
  But they provide sources/links, which I click occasionally and they have utm source with chatgpt
  - rafaelmn 1y ago
    which explains the low number of those in stats
wiredpancake 1y ago
[flagged]

TexanFeller 1y ago

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

Seattle3503 1y ago
Sometimes you're in a bubble. I'm in some niche fiction communities, and we can get some really warped perceptions about what people like to read because we are so deep in our own niche.
loveiswork 1y ago
Kagi’s response headers make it such that they cannot be included in this report
daveoc64 1y ago
Kagi is very open about how many users they have: https://kagi.com/stats https://kagi.com/stats ~56,000 users spread across the entire world isn't going to move the needle when looking at the sort of statistics in the report.

hammock 1y ago

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

thw_9a83c 1y ago

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)

euLh7SM5HDFY 1y ago

This is total domination, other engines are literal rounding errors. And this isn't a new thing. So it is weird that anti-monopol investigations into Google were so anemic so far.