Forget Google? It’s Time To Get Your Website Traffic Elsewhere

Google is the world’s most popular search engine, hoovering up the majority of the market share for years. As of July 2025, Google controls almost 90% of the market and sees roughly 16.4 billion searches per day.

So, why have website owners and businesses started to lose faith in Google?

Over the past few years, Google has come under fire for various reasons:

• Recent studies have accused Google’s AI Overviews of decreasing clicks to websites (which Google disputes)
• A US judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly over online ads in April this year
• In 2024, the US Department of Justice found Google to hold an illegal monopoly over search (its penalty is still to be determined)
• Google was fined in 2022 after losing an antitrust case against the European Commission

Despite this, Google is the default search engine for many consumers, which leaves businesses with no choice but to be proactive in getting featured in the SERPs.

While no other search engine comes close to Google’s market share for now, competition over rankings is heating up. It could be smart to look at diversifying your traffic sources because the search landscape is constantly evolving, especially with the introduction of AI and GEO.

These seven alternative platforms receive millions of users, providing businesses with an opportunity to expand their reach:

1. Bing

• Market share in July 2025 = 4.02%
• Bing is the default search engine for Windows devices
• Bing Ads can be cheaper than Google Ads

2. ChatGPT

• Market share in July 2025 = 0.72%
• ChatGPT search was launched last year
• Interestingly, one of the top Googled words this year is “ChatGPT”

3. Perplexity

• Provides detailed, summarized answers with cited sources
• Good for informative or educational businesses
• Businesses can sign up for Perplexity’s Merchant Program to get their products featured in search results

4. Yahoo

• Market share in July 2025 = 1.49%
• Yahoo offers a suite of tools, including email and finance

5. DuckDuckGo

• Market share in July 2025 = 0.95%
• Handles roughly 3 billion searches per month (far less than Google’s 16 billion per day)
• Your website should load faster due to DuckDuckGo blocking ads and trackers

6. Ecosia

• Market share in 2025 = 0.11%
• Known as “the search engine that plants trees” (over 200 million trees have been planted so far)
• According to Ecosia, 20 million people use the search engine

7. Baidu

• Market share in July 2025 = 0.72%
• The number one search engine in China
• Great ranking opportunities for businesses operating in the Chinese market

We’ve seen two major Google core updates this year: the March 2025 core update and the June 2025 core update. These aimed to surface relevant and helpful content in search results, encouraging businesses and blogs to focus on the reader, rather than catering to Google.

However, both core updates resulted in search volatility, causing lots of fluctuations in rankings for websites. While this volatility is expected, I haven’t seen the trackers calm down for a long time now, since the end of the June core update.

As usual, I don’t advise making any hasty changes to your website if you want to boost your rankings, but I do recommend exploring alternative search engines to make your website less reliant on Google traffic.