A new study by SparkToro and Datos (Semrush) debunks, at least regarding desktop and laptop use, one of the most repeated myths recently within the tourism sector: “The majority of queries to search for information, products, or services are already made through AI”. Reality appears to be very different from the sales pitches, and the data shows that generative AI tools in closed environments (ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Claude, or Copilot) continue to carry far less weight than they are credited with. In fact, they rank below platforms such as Reddit, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, and even Instagram, which in some scenarios already surpasses ChatGPT in search usage.
Google, for its part, remains the absolute dominant force. With the Gemini AI integration since November 2025 (which only activates when the system detects that the query requires advanced reasoning or complex synthesis), it accounts for nearly three-quarters of all desktop searches in the United States and Europe, far ahead of any competitor. This confirms that ChatGPT’s real influence on search behavior is residual compared to the narrative that some “industry gurus” try to push.
But perhaps the most revealing finding in the report is what almost no one is talking about: Amazon, Bing, and YouTube generate more search activity than ChatGPT, which shows that search fragmentation is not coming from AI but from the growing weight of platforms that have historically been underanalyzed when we talk about “searching” on the Internet.
So, where does desktop searching actually take place?
The SparkToro and Datos study offers a precise picture of search behavior when analyzing desktop only. By grouping the 41 platforms into five categories—traditional search engines, commerce, social media, AI, and other verticals—a clear pattern emerges about how users search:
- Traditional search engines: 80%
- Commerce sites (Amazon, Walmart, eBay…): 10%
- Social media (YouTube, Reddit, TikTok…): 5.5%
- AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek…): 3.2%
- Within that landscape, Google’s dominance remains absolute: 73.7% of all desktop searches in the US in Q4 2025. In the EU and the UK, its hegemony is even greater, adding +5 percentage points compared to the US.
Meanwhile, the weight of ChatGPT and other AI tools remains very limited. The European share is barely 0.75 points higher than the American one, which aligns with a slightly faster adoption in the region, but it remains far behind any traditional or even social platform. The final message of this study is clear: desktop search is still, above all, Google… and then everything else. AI is growing, yes, but it is far from leading real user behavior in the coming years.
Key takeaways
SparkToro is an audience research tool created by Rand Fishkin that maps the real digital behavior of any audience to help make marketing more precise and cost-effective. Datos is a global clickstream data provider, majority-owned by Semrush since 2023. Its function is to collect and license anonymous desktop and mobile browsing data at scale.
Searching for information before purchasing a product is not a channel; it is a behavior. Users search wherever feels most natural to them, whether in search engines, social platforms, marketplaces, or AI. For this reason, SEO must be understood as a multi-platform discipline while keeping in mind an obvious reality: ranking on Google remains the central pillar of any strategy, even above closed AI tools, whose real impact is still very limited.
Google’s real market share in the US in 2025 is much closer to 70% than to 90% when we include all platforms where searches occur. And it could fall to 65% if we were to consider the long tail of sites present in the mobile web, apps, and domains not included in this study. In the EU/UK, its dominance is even greater, reaching around 80%, compared to the ~95% that traditional methodologies tend to show.
Another key point: the majority of AI searches and responses still occur within Google. Even if we were to add up all the prompts from ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, and others (counting each one as a search), Google surpasses them by an enormous margin. With 16% of results showing AI Overviews, Google is, by far, the largest AI-assisted search tool in both the US and Europe, outpacing the rest by at least an order of magnitude. Finally, expectations should be tempered: ChatGPT is the most overrated tool in the ecosystem. In terms of search activity volume, it clearly lags Amazon, Bing, and YouTube—platforms that continue to capture far more real user intent.
What was the methodology of this study?
SparkToro is an audience research tool created by Rand Fishkin that maps the real digital behavior of any audience to help make marketing more precise and cost-effective. Datos is a global clickstream data provider, majority-owned by Semrush since 2023. Its function is to collect and license anonymous desktop and mobile browsing data at scale.
For this study, the desktop panel of the Datos (SEMRush) platform for 2025 was used, covering millions of devices in the United States and the 27 EU member countries, as well as the United Kingdom, broken down by month/quarter. A total of 41 domains were analyzed across numerous sectors (traditional search, e-commerce, AI tools, reference sites, travel, real estate, classified ads, and more). These were editorially selected by Rand, based on the 250 most visited domains in the Datos panel, narrowed down to those with relevant search behavior. You can find further information in the original article presenting the study results (LINK).