Is the AI search engine market growing or shrinking?
Miles FosterOwner and tester, RankDude
The answer▲ Growing
- Visits, year on year, without ChatGPT
- +36%
- Visits, last six months
- +112%
- Name searches vs October 2025
- -0.9%
Every month I add up the Google visits to the 10 AI search engine 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 998 million visits. Much of the year’s change is one site, ChatGPT; without it, visits are up 36% on a year ago.
The total hides very different stories: one site grew 720% in a year while another lost 97% 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 search engine market demand: key numbers, October 2026
Four numbers for October 2026. Visits mean visits from Google search to the 10 tracked sites. Tap one for the detail below.
- Visits from Google998Mvisits+260% vs a year ago
- Name searches, US125Msearches-1% vs October 2025
- Top five sites99.9%of visitsfastest grower: Felo AI
- Expected in November1039Mvisitslikely 956M to 1122M
- The AI search engine market is growing as of October 2026.
- The 10 AI search engine sites RankDude tracks got 998,385,210 visits from Google search in October 2026, 260% more visits than in October 2025, or 36% more without ChatGPT.
- People in the US searched Google for these sites by name 125,209,020 times in September 2026, about the same as in October 2025.
- The five most-visited AI search engine sites get 99.9% of all visits.
- Fastest-growing AI search engine site over the year: Felo AI, +720% (88.9K to 729K visits a month).
- Steepest fall over the year: Kagi, -97% (1.1M to 38.7K visits a month).
- Forecast for November 2026: about 1039M visits, likely between 956M and 1122M.
Source: DataForSEO visit estimates and Google Ads search data, published 2 November 2026 by RankDude.
1.Are more people visiting AI search engine sites than a year ago?
Up 260% on a year ago; up 3% on September 2026
Yes. The 10 tracked AI search engine sites got 998,385,210 visits from Google search in October 2026. That is 260% more visits than in October 2025, or 36% 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 79,242,965, up 849% on a year ago.
WorldVisits a month to AI search engine sites, worldwide, two years
Source: DataForSEO, Google search visits, all tracked sites.
Worldwide, this month
998M
+260.1% on a year ago
United States, this month
79M
+849.4% on a year ago
Two-year high
998M
October 2026
US share of visits
7.9%
of worldwide visits
Miles explains
More visits than a year ago means new people are still finding AI search engine sites through Google. Most of that growth is one site, ChatGPT; without it, visits are up 36% on a year ago.
2.Are people searching for AI search engine sites by name?
About level with October 2025 (-1%); 125M name searches a month in the US
About as many as before. People in the US searched Google for the names of the counted AI search engine sites 125,209,020 times in September 2026, about the same as 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 search engine” itself gets about 12,100 US searches a month (Google Ads, 12-month average).
USName searches a month for AI search engine sites, US
Source: Google Ads via DataForSEO, to September 2026.
USMost searched AI search engine sites by name, searches a month
ChatGPT124M a month
Perplexity1.0M a month
Brave Search165K a month
Andi14.8K a month
Kagi14.8K a month
iAsk8.1K a month
Miles explains
Name searches are level, so the regular users are still there.
3.Which AI search engine sites grew, and which shrank?
The five most-visited sites hold 99.9% of all visits
The five most-visited AI search engine sites get 99.9% of all visits, so one of them winning or losing a big Google ranking moves the whole total. Fastest grower over the year: Felo AI, from 88,910 to 728,737 visits (+720%). Steepest fall: Kagi, from 1,114,927 to 38,731 visits (-97%).
Growing fastest, year on year
Felo AI729K visits+720%- ChatGPT919M visits+320%
- Perplexity12M visits+75%
- Brave Search7.4M visits+67%
DuckDuckGo AI Chat58M visits+33%
Source: DataForSEO. Sites with 5,000+ visits a year ago.