Is the AI assistants market growing or shrinking?
Miles FosterOwner and tester, RankDude
The answer▲ Growing
- Visits, year on year, without ChatGPT
- +39%
- Visits, last six months
- +106%
- Name searches vs October 2025
- +3.9%
Every month I add up the Google visits to the 139 AI assistants sites I track (DataForSEO estimates) and how often people in the US search for them by name (Google Ads). In October 2026 they got about 1.1 billion visits. Much of the year’s change is one site, ChatGPT; without it, visits are up 39% on a year ago.
The total hides very different stories: one site grew 877% in a year while another lost 98% of its visits. See who grew and who shrank, the visits month by month and the name searches, plus what I expect for November 2026.
AI assistants market demand: key numbers, October 2026
Four numbers for October 2026. Visits mean visits from Google search to the 139 tracked sites. Tap one for the detail below.
- Visits from Google1092Mvisits+218% vs a year ago
- Name searches, US138Msearches+4% vs October 2025
- Top five sites95.7%of visitsfastest grower: Fyxer
- Expected in November1131Mvisitslikely 1041M to 1222M
- The AI assistants market is growing as of October 2026.
- The 139 AI assistants sites RankDude tracks got 1,091,789,008 visits from Google search in October 2026, 218% more visits than in October 2025, or 39% more without ChatGPT.
- People in the US searched Google for these sites by name 137,812,120 times in September 2026, 4% more searches than in October 2025.
- The five most-visited AI assistants sites get 95.7% of all visits.
- Fastest-growing AI assistants site over the year: Fyxer, +877% (5.7K to 55.3K visits a month).
- Steepest fall over the year: Lavender, -98% (46.5K to 1.0K visits a month).
- Forecast for November 2026: about 1131M visits, likely between 1041M and 1222M.
Source: DataForSEO visit estimates and Google Ads search data, published 2 November 2026 by RankDude.
1.Are more people visiting AI assistants sites than a year ago?
Up 218% on a year ago; up 3% on September 2026
Yes. The 139 tracked AI assistants sites got 1,091,789,008 visits from Google search in October 2026. That is 218% more visits than in October 2025, or 39% more without ChatGPT, and 3% more visits than in September 2026.
October 2026 is the highest month of the last two years. In the US, visits were 88,894,691, up 387% on a year ago.
WorldVisits a month to AI assistants sites, worldwide, two years
Source: DataForSEO, Google search visits, all tracked sites.
Worldwide, this month
1092M
+217.6% on a year ago
United States, this month
89M
+387.1% on a year ago
Two-year high
1092M
October 2026
US share of visits
8.1%
of worldwide visits
Miles explains
More visits than a year ago means new people are still finding AI assistants sites through Google. Most of that growth is one site, ChatGPT; without it, visits are up 39% on a year ago.
2.Are people searching for AI assistants sites by name?
Up 4% on October 2025; 138M name searches a month in the US
Yes, more than before. People in the US searched Google for the names of the counted AI assistants sites 137,812,120 times in September 2026, 4% more searches than in October 2025. Someone who searches a site’s name already knows it, so this is the clearest sign of people coming back on purpose. The term “ai assistants” itself gets about 301,000 US searches a month (Google Ads, 12-month average).
USName searches a month for AI assistants sites, US
Source: Google Ads via DataForSEO, to September 2026.
USMost searched AI assistants sites by name, searches a month
ChatGPT124M a month
Claude9.1M a month
DeepSeek1.2M a month
Perplexity1.0M a month
AI Chatting450K a month
Calendly368K a month
Miles explains
Name searches are up 4%. This number does not change when Google reshuffles its results, so it is the most reliable sign of growth on this page.
3.Which AI assistants sites grew, and which shrank?
The five most-visited sites hold 95.7% of all visits; the ten most-visited hold 98.6%
The five most-visited AI assistants sites get 95.7% of all visits, so one of them winning or losing a big Google ranking moves the whole total. Fastest grower over the year: Fyxer, from 5,661 to 55,308 visits (+877%). Steepest fall: Lavender, from 46,452 to 1,003 visits (-98%).
Growing fastest, year on year
Source: DataForSEO. Sites with 5,000+ visits a year ago.