Is the AI thumbnail maker market growing or shrinking?
Miles FosterOwner and tester, RankDude
The answer▼ Shrinking
- Visits, year on year, without Adobe Express
- -5.8%
- Visits, last six months
- -19%
- Name searches vs October 2025
- 0%
Every month I add up the Google visits to the 15 AI thumbnail maker 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 478 million visits. Much of the year’s change is one site, Adobe Express; without it, visits are down 6% on a year ago.
The total hides very different stories: one site grew 13% in a year while another lost 86% 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 thumbnail maker market demand: key numbers, October 2026
Four numbers for October 2026. Visits mean visits from Google search to the 15 tracked sites. Tap one for the detail below.
- Visits from Google478Mvisits-12% vs a year ago
- Name searches, US32Msearches0% vs October 2025
- Top five sites99.9%of visitsfastest grower: VidIQ
- Expected in November475Mvisitslikely 437M to 513M
- The AI thumbnail maker market is shrinking as of October 2026.
- The 15 AI thumbnail maker sites RankDude tracks got 477,756,335 visits from Google search in October 2026, 12% fewer visits than in October 2025, or 6% fewer without Adobe Express.
- People in the US searched Google for these sites by name 31,730,720 times in September 2026, about the same as in October 2025.
- The five most-visited AI thumbnail maker sites get 99.9% of all visits.
- Fastest-growing AI thumbnail maker site over the year: VidIQ, +13% (780K to 881K visits a month).
- Steepest fall over the year: TubeBuddy, -86% (640K to 89.3K visits a month).
- Forecast for November 2026: about 475M visits, likely between 437M and 513M.
Source: DataForSEO visit estimates and Google Ads search data, published 2 November 2026 by RankDude.
1.Are more people visiting AI thumbnail maker sites than a year ago?
Down 12% on a year ago; down 3% on September 2026
No. The 15 tracked AI thumbnail maker sites got 477,756,335 visits from Google search in October 2026. That is 12% fewer visits than in October 2025, or 6% fewer without Adobe Express, and 3% fewer visits than in September 2026.
The highest month of the last two years was June 2026, with 603,606,858 visits; October 2026 is 21% below it. In the US, visits were 57,433,248, down 9% on a year ago.
WorldVisits a month to AI thumbnail maker sites, worldwide, two years
Source: DataForSEO, Google search visits, all tracked sites.
Worldwide, this month
478M
-11.5% on a year ago
United States, this month
57M
-9.3% on a year ago
Two-year high
604M
June 2026
US share of visits
12%
of worldwide visits
Miles explains
Visits are lower than a year ago. Most of the drop since September 2026 is one site: Adobe Express went from 278,901,759 to 250,960,787 visits. Without it, the other sites grew 6% on the month. Google Trends interest in the term fell (-67%), but name searches did not, so some interest has cooled.
2.Are people searching for AI thumbnail maker sites by name?
About level with October 2025 (0%); 32M 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 thumbnail maker sites 31,730,720 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 thumbnail maker” itself gets about 1,900 US searches a month (Google Ads, 12-month average).
USName searches a month for AI thumbnail maker sites, US
Source: Google Ads via DataForSEO, to September 2026.
USMost searched AI thumbnail maker sites by name, searches a month
Miles explains
Name searches are level, so the regular users are still there.
3.Which AI thumbnail maker sites grew, and which shrank?
The five most-visited sites hold 99.9% of all visits; the ten most-visited hold 100%
The five most-visited AI thumbnail maker 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: VidIQ, from 779,733 to 880,566 visits (+13%). Steepest fall: TubeBuddy, from 639,780 to 89,334 visits (-86%).
Growing fastest, year on year
VidIQ881K visits+13%
Falling fastest, year on year
TubeBuddy89.3K visits-86%
Submagic216K visits-76%
Testmythumbnails15.2K visits-73%
Pikzels4.5K visits-58%
VEED3.1M visits-56%
Source: DataForSEO. Sites with 5,000+ visits a year ago.