Google Gemini Sends More Traffic To Sites Than Perplexity: Report

Google Gemini more than doubled its referral traffic to web sites between November and January, in response to SE Rating information from greater than 101,000 websites with Google Analytics put in.

The rise began in December, shortly after Google started rolling out Gemini 3 throughout its merchandise. SE Rating measured a 51% improve in December and a 42% improve in January, for a mixed achieve of about 115%.

For transparency, SE Rating sells AI visibility monitoring instruments, and the information under comes from their very own Google Analytics dataset.

Gemini Passes Perplexity

In January, SE Rating’s information exhibits Gemini despatched 29% extra guests to web sites than Perplexity globally. Within the U.S., the hole was wider at 41%.

5 months earlier, the positions had been reversed. In August, Perplexity was sending roughly thrice extra referral visitors than Gemini, in response to the same dataset.

ChatGPT’s Decline From Peak

ChatGPT’s referral visitors peaked in October and has fallen since then. SE Rating measured an 8% drop in November and an 18% drop in December, with a partial restoration in January.

Even after the decline, ChatGPT nonetheless generates about 80% of all AI referral visitors to web sites. ChatGPT’s lead over Gemini narrowed from roughly 22x in October to about 8x in January. That’s nonetheless a big hole.

Similarweb’s January data confirmed an identical sample when measuring direct visits to chatbot websites. ChatGPT’s visitors share fell from 86% to 64% over the previous 12 months, whereas Gemini rose from 5% to 21 %. The 2 datasets measure various things, however each present the identical course.

The Gemini 3 Connection

The timing of Gemini’s visitors improve traces up with Google’s rollout of Gemini 3 fashions.

Google launched Gemini 3 Professional on November 18, Gemini 3 Deep Assume on December 4, and Gemini 3 Flash on December 17. Flash grew to become the default mannequin within the Gemini app and in AI Mode for Search.

Earlier than these releases, Gemini’s referral visitors had been largely flat for eight months. SE Rating’s information exhibits it grew at roughly 4% per 30 days from January via October. The leap to 47% month-to-month progress in December and January represents a few 12x acceleration from the prior tempo.

AI Visitors In Context

All AI platforms mixed nonetheless account for a small share of general internet visitors. SE Rating places the determine at about 0.24% of worldwide web visitors as of January, up from 0.15% in 2025.

An earlier SE Rating report of 13,700 web sites discovered Google producing 94% of natural visitors. ChatGPT and Perplexity had been beginning to present up in referral stories. The brand new dataset is bigger at 101,574 websites throughout 250 markets however makes use of the identical GA-based methodology.

Why This Issues

Two months of progress from Gemini doesn’t predict the place AI referral visitors will likely be by 12 months’s finish. The rise from November to January is measurable and correlates with a identified product launch, nevertheless it’s too early to name it a sustained sample.

The Perplexity milestone is extra concrete. Gemini could now present up as a bigger referral supply than Perplexity in your individual analytics. That’s value checking.

Trying Forward

SE Rating says it’s going to proceed monitoring AI referral visitors via 2026. Google hasn’t disclosed referral visitors figures for Gemini or AI Mode straight. The following Similarweb AI Tracker replace might present a second information level on whether or not Gemini’s progress continued previous January.

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