Google’s struggles in the AI model space seem to be showing up in the usage of its Gemini platform.
The latest generative AI traffic data from SimilarWeb, covering the twelve months through August 2026, shows Gemini’s share of global website traffic slipping for a second consecutive month, even as ChatGPT continues to claw back ground it had been steadily losing for over a year.
According to the data, Gemini held 27.8% of generative AI traffic three months ago, before dipping to 26.5% two months ago, and now 25.6% in the most recent reading. ChatGPT, over the same three-month stretch, has moved in the opposite direction — climbing from 52.7% to 54.2% and now 55.5%. It’s a modest reversal in percentage-point terms, but a meaningful one given the trajectory both platforms had been on for the better part of a year.
The longer-term picture still favors Google’s comeback story, even if the last two months complicate it. A year ago, in August 2025, ChatGPT commanded 73.3% of generative AI traffic to Gemini’s 12.9%. Six months ago, that gap had narrowed considerably, with ChatGPT down to 56.7% and Gemini up to 25.4%. Gemini’s climb from roughly 13% to over 27% inside of nine months was, by any measure, one of the more dramatic swings the generative AI market has seen since ChatGPT’s launch from Gemini crossing 20% of traffic share for the first time in January to eventually pulling roughly even with half of ChatGPT’s traffic by April.
That momentum has now stalled for two straight months. The slowdown was first observerd last month, when Gemini’s share dipped from 27.0% to 26.8% — the first monthly decline in the platform’s run since its rise began. The latest numbers confirm that wasn’t a one-off blip: Gemini has now lost share in back-to-back months, while ChatGPT has gained in both.
Part of the explanation likely traces back to Google’s product roadmap, or the lack of movement on it in recent months. Sundar Pichai had teased Gemini 3.5 Pro at Google I/O, promising an imminent release, but the update has yet to materialize in a way that’s translated into a fresh traffic bump — unlike earlier this year, when releases like Gemini 3 Pro and the viral Nano Banana image model helped drive Gemini’s surge. Without a comparable catalyst in the last couple of months, Gemini’s growth appears to have run into a ceiling, at least for now.
Elsewhere in the rankings, Anthropic’s Claude continues to be the most consistent gainer among the smaller players, holding at 9.2-9.5% over the past three months after nearly tripling its share earlier in the year. DeepSeek and Grok remain locked in a similar band to each other, hovering between 2.4% and 3.6% without any clear breakout. Copilot and Perplexity round out the field at under 2% each, largely unchanged over the period.
Whether Gemini’s dip is the start of a longer plateau or just a temporary pause before its next model release reignites growth remains to be seen. But for the first time in over a year, the momentum in the generative AI traffic race appears to be tilting back toward ChatGPT.