Questionable Stats
From Statcounter "For our search engine stats, we analyze every page view referred by a search engine." & "We remove bot activity"
So do they count traffic from ChatGPT? An increasing number of people are searching the web by using ChatGPT, which uses Bing. However, the traffic on the server side is possibly not being seen as 'search traffic'.
We have a custom shield on our site, and almost ended up blocking ChatGPT due to the rapidly increasing number of requests coming from its IPs. Although ChatGPT uses Bing, the IPs don't track as Bing search engine IPs.
Google is in a real pickle due to the increase in browsing via ChatGPT. It's so much easier and faster to have AI assist the search (I'm talking proper ChatGPT interface here, not the stuff integrated into Bing browser) - and I find myself using ChatGPT4 for 80% of web search requirements these days. There is currently no advertising baked in which makes it so much better. Bard on the other hand has deliberately crippled its own search abilities because a shift to AI means a shift away from advertising revenues, at least until they figure out the details of how to pollute the results with commercial items in a way that doesn't drive people to a non-advertising competitor.
Google either makes Bard useful to get market share, but that hits its profits hard for several years during the advertising revenue transition, or it keep Bard crippled and ChatGPT will continue to dominate AI and Google will find itself in an even weaker position in a few years.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
