Google Gemini more than doubled its referral traffic to websites between November and January, according to SE Ranking data from more than 101,000 sites with Google Analytics installed.
The increase started in December, shortly after Google began rolling out Gemini 3 across its products. SE Ranking measured a 51% increase in December and a 42% increase in January, for a combined gain of about 115%.
For transparency, SE Ranking sells AI visibility tracking tools, and the data below comes from their own Google Analytics dataset.
Gemini Passes Perplexity
In January, SE Ranking’s data shows Gemini sent 29% more visitors to websites than Perplexity globally. In the U.S., the gap was wider at 41%.
Five months earlier, the positions were reversed. In August, Perplexity was sending roughly three times more referral traffic than Gemini, according to the same dataset.
ChatGPT’s Decline From Peak
ChatGPT’s referral traffic peaked in October and has fallen since then. SE Ranking measured an 8% drop in November and an 18% drop in December, with a partial recovery in January.
Even after the decline, ChatGPT still generates about 80% of all AI referral traffic to websites. ChatGPT’s lead over Gemini narrowed from roughly 22x in October to about 8x in January. That’s still a large gap.
Similarweb’s January data showed a similar pattern when measuring direct visits to chatbot sites. ChatGPT’s traffic share fell from 86% to 64% over the past year, while Gemini rose from 5% to 21 %. The two datasets measure different things, but both show the same direction.
The Gemini 3 Connection
The timing of Gemini’s traffic increase lines up with Google’s rollout of Gemini 3 models.
Google released Gemini 3 Pro on November 18, Gemini 3 Deep Think on December 4, and Gemini 3 Flash on December 17. Flash became the default model in the Gemini app and in AI Mode for Search.
Before those releases, Gemini’s referral traffic had been mostly flat for eight months. SE Ranking’s data shows it grew at roughly 4% per month from January through October. The jump to 47% monthly growth in December and January represents about a 12x acceleration from the prior pace.
AI Traffic In Context
All AI platforms combined still account for a small share of overall web traffic. SE Ranking puts the figure at about 0.24% of global internet traffic as of January, up from 0.15% in 2025.
An earlier SE Ranking report of 13,700 websites found Google generating 94% of organic traffic. ChatGPT and Perplexity were starting to show up in referral reports. The new dataset is larger at 101,574 sites across 250 markets but uses the same GA-based methodology.
Why This Matters
Two months of growth from Gemini doesn’t predict where AI referral traffic will be by year’s end. The increase from November to January is measurable and correlates with a known product launch, but it’s too early to call it a sustained pattern.
The Perplexity milestone is more concrete. Gemini may now show up as a larger referral source than Perplexity in your own analytics. That’s worth checking.
Looking Ahead
SE Ranking says it will continue monitoring AI referral traffic through 2026. Google hasn’t disclosed referral traffic figures for Gemini or AI Mode directly. The next Similarweb AI Tracker update could provide a second data point on whether Gemini’s growth continued past January.
Featured Image: DANIEL CONSTANTE/Shutterstock
