ChatGPT’s web traffic drops nearly 10% in June after flattening for a while as per SimilarWeb’s data.
Worldwide traffic to ChatGPT (desktop and mobile combined) declined 9.73% in June, a first, after growing explosively since the launch of the generative AI tool by OpenAI.
ChatGPT gets more worldwide traffic than Bing, NY Times, and CNN but only 2% of Google.com—According to SimilarWeb’s latest data. In a blog report, the analytics company mentions how “the growth in traffic to the ChatGPT site is starting to level off…”
Notably, this data doesn’t take into account the user growth of the iOS ChatGPT app or the API users of the service.
ChatGPT gained 100 million monthly active users in January 2023, only a couple of months after its launch in November 2022.
SimilarWeb’s data additionally shows that the time users spend on the website is down 8.5%. The company previously commented that the explosive growth was flattening since March 2023.
Official take:
Still, the drop in interest not only for ChatGPT but one of its key competitors is a sign that the novelty has worn off for AI chat. Chatbots will have to prove their worth, rather than taking it for granted, from here on out.
David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager, SimilarWeb Newsroom
Opinion:
What is interesting about SimilarWeb’s data is that the release of ChatGPT plugins and web browsing in May, the elements that should elevate ChatGPT from the basic function of a text generator to an ecosystem and potential Google killer, and the launch of GPT-4 in March did not result in another major growth.
Matthias Bastian, Co-founder, The Decoder
It’s notable here that ChatGPT recently (temporarily) removed the Browse feature owing to its misuse in scraping paywalled content or bypassing ads and cookie consents.
