By Matt G. Southern
Publication Date: 2026-03-30 05:00:00
Google Gemini more than doubled its referral traffic to websites between November and January, according to SE Ranking data from more than 101,000 sites with Google Analytics installed.
The increase started in December, shortly after Google began rolling out Gemini 3 across its products. SE Ranking measured a 51% increase in December and a 42% increase in January, for a combined gain of about 115%.
For transparency, SE Ranking sells AI visibility tracking tools, and the data below comes from their own Google Analytics dataset.
Gemini Passes Perplexity
In January, SE Ranking’s data shows Gemini sent 29% more visitors to websites than Perplexity globally. In the U.S., the gap was wider at 41%.
Five months earlier, the positions were reversed. In August, Perplexity was sending roughly three times more referral traffic than Gemini, according to the same dataset.
ChatGPT’s Decline From Peak
ChatGPT’s referral traffic peaked in October and has fallen since then. SE Ranking measured an 8% drop in November and an 18% drop in December, with a partial recovery in January.
Even after the decline, ChatGPT still generates about 80% of all AI referral traffic to websites. ChatGPT’s lead over Gemini narrowed from roughly 22x in October to about 8x in January. That’s still a large gap.
Similarweb’s January data showed a similar pattern when measuring direct visits to chatbot sites. ChatGPT’s traffic share fell from 86% to 64% over the past year, while Gemini rose from 5% to…
