Traffic Drops of the Biggest Websites After AI Chats

Published on

August 27, 2025

Updated on

November 19, 2025

| Maria Harutyunyan

| 10 Min Read

This Article Contains

Website Traffic – Key Takeaways 2025

Online Traffic and Audience Trends

AI tools are one of the fast-developing technologies, affecting and replacing many traditional online platforms and apps.

In this report, Loopex Digital takes a deep dive into the visitation statistics for the biggest websites on the Internet and how they have been affected by AI popularity. By covering the change in their traffic, monthly Google searches, and online trends, we’re highlighting the shifts in the online space that will be interesting both for general audiences and specialists, exploring growth and optimization.

Website Traffic – Key Takeaways 2025

Website traffic is expected to drop by more than 50% by 2028, influenced by AI chat tools that allow users to find answers without visiting the pages directly.

News platforms are among the most affected, with The Business Insider, CNN, and New York Times all being in the top 20 for the highest traffic losses.

Q&A platforms, learning and specialized information websites are also largely affected by AI tools, with many of them scraping data and decreasing traffic to these platforms.

News Platforms Statistics

The Business Insider experienced the highest traffic drop, with 48.4% fewer people visiting it in 2025.

CNN has almost 20% fewer visitations to its website, but holds steady on Google, losing only 0.9% in queries for news.

CNN also remains the most popular news platform among those that lose traffic, with 47.7 million website visits.

Q&A Website Trends

AI chatbots offer their own answers to people’s questions, and the trend of asking other people on the Internet is going down.

Quora lost 28.1% of visitors this year, with 38.6 million unique website visits.

Stack Overflow, a programming Q&A website, shares the same trend, with a 35.5% drop in platform visits and a 32.4% decrease on Google.

Reddit holds strong against AI innovations, gaining 68.2% in website traffic and 12.3% on Google.

Translation and Language Learning Platforms Trends

Google Translate lost the most visitors among the biggest translation platforms, with many users asking AI for translation instead.

Over 32.7% of website traffic was lost by Google Translate, and it lost positions in Google searches, with 16.7% fewer people looking it up online.

Dictionary websites are also largely affected by AI chats, with Dictionary.com being the third biggest website, losing the most online traffic, with visitations dropping from 34.1 million last year to 21.3 million in 2025.

Babbel experienced a smaller drop, with only 12.6%, while its Google popularity decrease is 2 times bigger, with 24.3%.

Editing and style tools actually gained popularity, which can be attributed to the need to edit and polish AI-generated content.

Grammarly increased its website popularity by 8.3% in 2025, while Hemingway Editor grew its traffic by almost a quarter, with 22.4%.

Travelling Websites Trend

Travelling websites are also among the most affected by AI tools, with both TripAdvisor and Expedia getting fewer visits in 2025.

TripAdvisor lost both website traffic (-7.5%) and is less searched online this year, with 14.9% drop in Google queries.

Expedia maintained website visits better, with a decrease of only 4.9%, but performs worse in general searches online, with 17.8% fewer Google searches.

Specialized Knowledge Platforms

The websites offering specialized knowledge are also affected by AI, showing similar trends across different sectors and industries.

WebMD, a health information website, takes 2nd place for lost traffic after AI chat adoption, seeing a 43.1% decrease in monthly visits over the year.

Investopedia, a website for financial knowledge, is in the top 10 biggest websites losing traffic because of AI, going from 40.3 million monthly visits to 26.9 million this year (33.2% drop).

AllRecipes, which is one of the most popular cooking and recipe websites, saw a significant drop in visitors this year, going from 58.1 million monthly to 49.7 million.

Job and Education Trends

Among more unexpected trends, job and education tools are also losing visitors.

Wikipedia, the largest and most famous website for general knowledge, still competes with AI tools, but sees an 8.1% decrease in platform traffic and a 13.4% decrease in Google queries.

Visits to Indeed, one of the biggest websites for job search, dropped by 13.8%, and the website is searched 9.5% less often on Google.

Chegg, a study help and textbook website, ranks 10th for lost traffic, with the visits decreasing by 18.8%, as more people are turning to AI chats for study help.

Bibliography tools are losing popularity too, being replaced by the source feature of many AI chats. The prime example is the Citation Machine website, with its traffic decreased by 16.1%.

Online Traffic and Audience Trends

AI Chatbots Are Disrupting Website Traffic

As AI chat tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity become more advanced, they’re changing how people search, learn, and consume information online. Instead of visiting websites, users now turn to AI chatbots for quick, summarized answers, reducing the need to click through traditional search results or browse articles. This shift is starting to show huge impacts on traffic to some of the biggest websites on the Internet.

SEO and Search-Based Sites Under Threat

Search-based platforms like Google are also facing the ripple effects. As more users bypass traditional methods of information search in favor of AI chat interfaces, Google reported a subtle but telling drop in global traffic, as it is down 2.5% over the last 12 months. While it may seem modest, any traffic loss at Google’s scale is impactful, especially when combined with related losses at sites that rely on search, like Wikipedia (-4.9%) and Amazon product pages (-3.6%).

This trend is pushing content creators and marketers to rethink their SEO strategies, as top-of-search visibility becomes less valuable in a world where AI serves as the middleman.

Online Traffic Trends Forecast

By 2028, website traffic for many information-based sites is projected to drop by over 50%. This is being driven not by a lack of interest, but by a shift in how people access information. From recipe blogs to health advice pages, AI tools are collecting data from websites while decreasing their overall traffic.

However, one factor that still has a major influence on traffic is Click-Through Rate (CTR). A higher CTR means significantly more visitors landing on your website. If you're planning to create a new page for a specific keyword, we strongly encourage using our CTR calculator to estimate how much traffic that page could realistically generate. It helps you forecast traffic potential and prioritize the pages that will deliver the highest impact.

Maria Harutyunyan

Our blog covers a combination of industry trends and professional insights from behind-the-scenes experiences. We provide weekly updates on link building, content marketing, on-site and technical SEO, and more! Sign up for our newsletter and join our LinkedIn to be on top of industry trends!

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Maria Harutyunyan

Our blog covers a combination of industry trends and professional insights from behind-the-scenes experiences dealing with every aspect of SEO. We provide weekly updates on topics such as link building, content marketing, on-site and technical SEO and more! Don’t miss any industry updates by signing up for our newsletter! You’ll also receive exclusive SEO strategies and learn about industry secrets like: