Search engine referral report for 2025 Q2
28 comments
·September 1, 2025VladVladikoff
highwaylights
If you go Google something right now you’re not doing a web search like you were even a year ago - the first thing that comes up (and takes up most of the screen depending on your device) is a Gemini response to your query.
At the least it can be inferred that Google has fundamentally changed their main product to mimic a competitor, which is something you just don’t do if everything’s OK.
PaulKeeble
Google on 88.9% of search results clicked and bing on 3.056% with everyone else even less. This is not a competitive market and it seems very stable over time.
onlyrealcuzzo
It really shows you what a bubble HN is.
Every post about Google for years has been people saying it's terrible and dead.
Kagi gets talked about on here constantly, and it's not even on the list (though I suspect there's a reason?)
Even within Google, about a year ago, everyone was saying that Google was dead because of Perplexity, which is barely a blip.
It's kind of shocking to see DuckDuckGo is only about 1%, with everything you hear and how much you hear it within certain bubbles.
gkbrk
Google spends something around 30 billion dollars a year to be the default search engine across many platforms. You can spend the same amount and tomorrow your search engine will have 88.9% of searches.
It's not a charity, if people truly preferred Google results over defaults, Google wouldn't give out tens of billions of dollars to be the default.
brookst
I’d argue that HN sentiment is a leading indicator, not a claim of current reality.
Compared to a year ago, Google has declined from 89.487% to 88.915%. Just half a percent, but IMO it will accelerate.
Meanwhile OpenAI has gone from 0.194% to 0.226% in just three months (they weren’t on previous quarter’s reports).
Sure, it’ll be years before Google drops to 50%. But it will happen.
jorams
> Kagi gets talked about on here constantly, and it's not even on the list (though I suspect there's a reason?)
Not that I'd expect them high up on the list, but Kagi sends the following response header:
Referrer-Policy: same-origin
EbNar
> Kagi gets talked about on here constantly, and it's not even on the list (though I suspect there's a reason?)
Being at least 10€/month for the only "useful" tier is a powerful reason for that...
Maybe also Kagi being a metasearch engine reduces its visibility? Just speculating, I obviously don't know how it really works.
chrisweekly
My Kagi account is $5 (USD)/ mo and it is VERY useful.
toast0
> Every post about Google for years has been people saying it's terrible and dead.
They are terrible, but that doesn't mean anybody else is good or better. And being better at search isn't enough anyway [1]. Also, when you give Google less of your searches, personalization drops off and it gets even worse, but most people give all their searches to google so they see the benefit of personalization if they compare.
[1] When Yahoo did user research on search, one of their findings was that if you asked users which results were better, there was a strong and consistent preference towards results that were shown as Google results, regardless of the actual results. It's been forever since I saw those reports, so I don't remember the numbers, and the numbers are likely different today anyway, but that's a huge barrier to adoption that you have to manage.
mgh2
Is it a though? Just bc 99% of population don’t notice or care about misinformation, does it mean the majority consensus is right?
Which do you think is more abundant, lies or truths?
ivape
What do you think most people use when they need a taxi now days? Humans believe the market is some kind of magical place where everyone gets a slice of the pie. This is not true, winners are a thing.
Semaphor
Over here, I'd say minicar or maxicar
null
TexanFeller
Kagi didn’t even make the list? I’ve completely switched away from Google and only use Kagi…
Seattle3503
Sometimes you're in a bubble. I'm in some niche fiction communities, and we can get some really warped perceptions about what people like to read because we are so deep in our own niche.
freeqaz
I really want to know how many search requests are being made by ChatGPT and other AI systems in 2025. I know OpenAI has a partnership with Bing for this, but then I see OpenAI in the list on the post.
Do we know if they're sending the referer header? Maybe there is no way to know. It would just be interesting to see that trend over time.
epolanski
I highly doubt these numbers.
I see how (in Italy/Poland) me, my friends and relatives have turned towards Gemini for the lots of queries.
People walking around the streets and asking Gemini for restaurants, directions or any general questions is starting to be extremely common, but I doubt that Cloudflare can measure those (afterall it never goes through a browser since Gemini app is embedded in the home button of Android phones).
I also doubt that Cloudflare measures the gargantuan amount of queries people do through, e.g., their AI desktop apps or stuff like Claude Code, that effectively replaces google searches.
willahmad
From a personal experience, at least 50% of my Google searches moved to ChatGPT and Claude. Since, I saw many similar transitions with my friends and coworkers, I was expecting higher numbers for OpenAI.
Do you see a similar transition in your network?
parhamn
Do you often ask questions that lead you to a link? I use LLMs heavily but still use google when looking for a link.
willahmad
Depends on the questions.
If a technical problem, before my questions were leading either to official doc or stackoverflow, now I get possible solutions to try
Other types of questions like reviews, product comparisons GPT shows couple of relevant links to reddit and I go check them to see if summary was right and then surf relevant subreddit.
If I assign a number, I would say 80% of my requests lead to answers inside the GPT, other 20% lead to links
pr337h4m
> The strategy we use relies on the referer header we see when we get an HTTP/S request.
This is interesting data but is not really a useful estimate of search engine market share in 2025.
entuno
And one that would understate privacy-focused search engines, because the people using those are far less likely to be sending useful referrers.
internetter
What search engines don't send referrer headers?
mdaniel
I was expecting DDG to be one of them (before I read the report), so I did some digging and it seems that they have <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...> set to "origin", meaning it says that the request came from duckduckgo.com but nothing further
<meta name="referrer" content="origin">
(I also had a good chuckle at them choosing to break the typo chain with this directive)
system2
It's very nice to see all the details. Two things came to my attention. In countries like Turkey or Eastern European ones, Google adoption doesn't change regardless of what platform they are on, pushing nearly 90% on every device. In the USA, Windows users actually prefer Bing a little more.
Does this mean other countries are better at using computers/more conscious users, and changing the default search engine/browser? It might be related to Edge being the default for Windows computers, but this is overridden by the users in other countries. Or is it because Microsoft is pushing more ads and is trusted more in the USA?
The second question is how much OpenAI disrupted the overall Google traffic. That's probably the most important metric anyone wants to see.
Considering the fact that very few people exit from AI searches into the web, rather than just ending the session (having received the answer they were looking for); it seems to me that this report would vastly overstate traditional search engine market share. Personally I’ve basically stopped using Google as my primary search. I usually start by searching in an LLM. Especially if the query is complex (e.g. give me a summary of USAs current lunar missions and progress towards a lunar base.) The only time I still go to google is for maps related searches. To find local businesses. But often in that case I will go directly to maps.google.com. I would like to see a real report on market share. I expect Google has lost a lot and hasn’t yet admitted it.