AI Search Isn’t Killing Google. But It Is Offering New Opportunities.
The numbers tell a compelling story of parallel growth rather than replacement. ChatGPT attracted 4.5 billion visits in March 2025, while Google processed over 5 trillion searches in 2024—a 20% increase year-over-year. This isn’t a zero-sum game; AI tools are simply expanding the total addressable search market.
Luca Dal Zotto, co-founder of Rent a Mac in Toronto, provides concrete evidence of this shift from his company’s analytics: “Our statistics indicate that 43% of our potential clients now visit us via AI-driven answers rather than conventional Google searches,” he says. “That’s a 290% increase from AI-driven traffic in the last 18 months.”
How AI tools are creating more informed, high-intent searchers
Most significantly, Dal Zatto reports that “these AI visitors convert at a 34% higher rate than conventional search traffic, probably because AI tools pre-filter their searches more precisely.”
The user journey has fundamentally changed. Gabriel De Luna, senior SEO specialist at Penbrothers in the Philippines, observes: “Brand searches are rising, and rising significantly. The user journey now looks like this: question answered by AI, consideration triggered, brand search in Google, website visit, conversion. It’s not shorter, it’s different.”
Raju Dandigam, engineering manager at Navan, has witnessed this transformation in tech environments: “I have observed product teams at startups use Perplexity to rapidly explore market categories which previously required multiple tabs with refined searches and switching between Google tabs. Users receive synthesized information through one dialogue which references original sources but shows results directly in the conversation.”
The Strategic Implication: AI search tools are creating a new top-of-funnel that feeds into traditional search and conversion paths. Rather than competing with Google, they’re often complementing it by creating more informed, high-intent searches.
Interested in learning more? Download our free whitepaper “What You Need to Know (and Do) About AI-Driven Search” with strategies and tips from Strategic Communications and other digital marketing experts.
(Strategic Communications is a Qwoted affiliate. Right now, it’s the only app/product we’re an affiliate of. Why? Because in our work, we find it to be the most reliable for finding and vetting sources that are relevant to the work we’re doing, and for reaching out to journalists and reporters to get PR for ourselves and our clients. Highly recommend! Use code LINDA for $50 off your first month.)