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Investing.com -- Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s global search share saw a slight increase in February, rising by 37 basis points month-over-month to 90.2%, though slightly declining on a year-over-year basis, Bank of America revealed on Thursday, citing data from Statcounter.
In contrast, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing’s share edged up by 1 basis point month-over-month and 63 basis points year-over-year, reaching a 4.0% share.
The "Others" category, which encompasses search engines such as Yandex (NASDAQ:NBIS), Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), and Naver, but excludes ChatGPT, saw a decrease of 40 basis points month-over-month, though it was up 62 basis points year-over-year, totaling a 4.6% share.
“Top share gainer in Other category was Yandex (up 46bps y/y),” BofA analysts led by Justin Post said in a note.
In terms of web traffic, Google maintained a steady flow of global average daily visits, with 2.7 billion in February, marking a 1% decline year-over-year.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, saw a significant surge, with visits up 153% year-over-year to 144 million. Bing’s visits dropped by 3% year-over-year to 49 million.
On a month-over-month basis, Google’s traffic was flat, ChatGPT grew by 12%, Bing decreased by 17%, and Gemini increased by 18%.
In the U.S., Google’s visits remained stable year-over-year at 542 million, while ChatGPT’s U.S. visits jumped 95% year-over-year to 22 million, and Bing’s fell by 9% year-over-year to 12 million.
The mobile user segment also demonstrated strong growth for ChatGPT, with a 15% month-over-month increase in global daily active users (DAUs), reaching 58 million. This is a significant 263% jump year-over-year.
Google’s global mobile DAUs grew modestly by 1% month-over-month to 888 million, a 12% increase year-over-year.
Bing’s mobile DAUs declined sharply by 41% year-over-year to 3 million.
Perplexity, another AI platform, saw an impressive 334% year-over-year growth to 2 million DAUs.
Despite the burgeoning interest in AI and the growth of platforms like ChatGPT, Google’s search market share and web traffic have remained relatively stable.
“We think Gen-AI has increased overall search activity by enabling more nuanced, context-aware queries,” analysts said.
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT is capturing a larger slice of the incremental AI-related activity, its impact on Google Search appears to be minimal at this stage.
Google recently disclosed in a blog post that it processes over 5 trillion searches annually, marking a 12% compound annual growth rate since 2016.
“We think new disclosures highlight Google’s ability to capitalize on new search use cases over time,” the analysts continued.
BofA maintained a Buy rating on Google stock.