Similarweb just launched its GenAI Intelligence Toolkit, allowing brands to measure their visibility across AI platforms like ChatGPT and track referral traffic. With AI referrals hitting 1.1 billion visits in June 2025 (up 357% year-over-year), marketers can now analyze real prompt triggers and benchmark against competitors.
ChatGPT referrals to news publishers have surged past 25 million in 2025—up over 25x from under 1 million a year earlier, according to Similarweb. But with organic search traffic plunging from over 2.3 billion visits to under 1.7 billion as Google's AI answers take over, the bump is hardly enough to offset publisher losses.
Character.ai is catching up to ChatGPT on mobile in the U.S., reaching 4.2 million monthly active users compared to ChatGPT's nearly 6 million. Even more striking is the demographic split: nearly 60% of Character.ai's web audience is aged 18 to 24, while ChatGPT sits at just 27%. Entertainment-focused companion AI is showing serious staying power with younger users.
ChatGPT's web visits just fell for the third consecutive month in August, with average time on site dropping to 7 minutes. However, the decline slowed significantly to 3% compared to 10% drops earlier in the summer, and US traffic even ticked up slightly. Similarweb attributes the dip largely to school holidays, noting traffic stabilized as students headed back to class.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT saw desktop and mobile web visits drop 9.7% in June, marking its first traffic decline since launch, according to Similarweb data. The dip likely stems from summer break for students and initial curiosity fading, though traffic may also just be migrating to its new iOS app. Why it matters: even with the drop, ChatGPT still easily crushes rivals like Google's Bard.
