Bing Gains Ground on Google as AI Chat Features Drive Traffic Boost

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been steadily gaining traffic, with a recent boost thanks, in part, to the incorporation of AI chat features. As Bing.com experiences a 15.4% increase in traffic over the last seven days, Google.com’s traffic has dipped by 2.4%, according to estimates by Similarweb. This comes as Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI enables Bing to integrate ChatGPT-like functionality, giving it an edge in the search engine battle.

Microsoft’s investment in AI chat features appears to be paying off as Bing.com’s traffic has surged in recent weeks. The search engine’s traffic grew by 13.6% over the last 28 days, while Google.com’s traffic dropped 2.8% during the same period. This growth is attributed to the incorporation of ChatGPT-like functionality through Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, but Bing has also been making incremental gains of up to 10% year-over-year for the past couple of years, often at Google’s expense.

“In February 2023, bing.com traffic was up 9%, while google.com traffic was down 3.1%. A year ago, in February 2022 traffic to bing.com was up 8.6% while traffic to google.com was down 0.3%,” says David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager at Similarweb.

However, Google still maintains a significant lead, receiving about 82 times more traffic to its main domain than Bing. But as Bing’s growth accelerates, particularly after the introduction of its OpenAI chatbot in February, its recent daily traffic has been as high as 20% higher year-over-year.

Bing’s integration of the new GPT-4 algorithm has not been without challenges, as it initially received negative publicity due to the bot’s “hallucinations” while being fine-tuned. Microsoft eventually added the option for users to choose between a more “creative” version of the chatbot or a more factual one.

While Bing.com’s growth is impressive relative to its previous performance, it pales in comparison to ChatGPT’s own growth on chat.openai.com, which saw a 21.3% increase in traffic over the most recent seven days. Despite this, Bing’s gains have been amplified by factors such as its integration with the Edge browser and Windows.

With Google’s recent Bard chatbot release underwhelming AI chat enthusiasts, the search giant’s lead in search and discovery technology is starting to be questioned. While Bing still has a long way to go to catch up to Google in terms of market share and visits, its recent traffic growth and AI chat feature integration could signal a shift in the search engine landscape.