It would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago to think someone could come and challenge Google?
After decades of dominance, Google's search engine is showing its first cracks. In 2025, Google's global search market share dipped below 90% – as users flock to AI-powered alternatives. In fact, OpenAI's ChatGPT now handles roughly 15–20% of the daily query volume that Google does.
Google searches are down, and ChatGPT queries are way up.
ChatGPT's Explosive Growth
ChatGPT's weekly active users climbed from 50 million in January 2023 to 800 million by April 2025, in the explosive growth of AI-driven "answer engines."
As of 2025, ChatGPT was handling over a billion queries per day– a staggering rise for a product that didn't even exist publicly before late 2022. Users are clearly enamored with an "answer engine" that gives a direct response, instead of a list of 'blue links'.
Google hasn't stood still – it launched its own AI summary features – but something fundamental has changed in user behavior.
People Aren't Visiting Websites!
One striking side effect of this AI-driven search revolution is a drop in people clicking through to websites. Both Google and ChatGPT are trying to answer your question outright, which means less need to follow a link for details.
When Google tested its AI-generated search summaries, organic click-through rates to websites plunged by about 70% in those results. These "zero-click searches" are becoming the norm: why click a source link if the answer is already on your screen? What does this also mean? Less ad revenue for Google.
ChatGPT's interface often doesn't always show explicit citations. And when it does provide sources, many users don't bother to follow them. They trust the summary, or they've gotten what they needed.
Why are citation follow-throughs reducing? Because the future of search is looking more like an answer platform than an old-school directory of links. They're pulling information from all over the web, synthesizing it for you, and sparing you the click. It's convenient for users – though arguably scary for content creators who rely on that traffic.
Why Reddit Is So Darn Good
If there's one corner of the internet that exemplifies authentic, human insight, it's Reddit. (AKA "the front page of the Internet"!) Reddit is a massive collection of communities ("subreddits") where real people ask questions, share experiences, and vet the answers collectively.
If you join a subreddit, they are heavily moderated with real online communities to ensure information is real, relevant and non-promotional. A strong reason why GPT weights Reddit so highly.
A recent study found TikTok, Reddit, and ChatGPT are fast becoming Gen Z's go-to search tools, often preferred over Google. That's right – the youngest generation of web users often goes straight to Reddit or similar platforms to find information, because they crave that unfiltered, real-life perspective. So…. Maybe Reddit laid the ground work for AI to shift from Google.
Reddit's secret sauce is its authenticity. You can't buy or bluff your way into Reddit's trust – the communities are quick to sniff out spam or self-promotion. Most subreddits have strict "no spam, no self-promo" rules, and moderators (along with vigilant users) will call out anything that smells fake.
Even Google recognises the value of Reddit's content. Ever notice how often a Reddit thread appears in your Google results for a niche query? There's data to back that up: roughly 21% of Google's own AI search answers have cited Reddit as a source in one analysis (versus 11% for ChatGPT). Those upvoted answers and comment threads are goldmines of insight, and both traditional search and AI systems know it.
Wikipedia: The Web's Living Encyclopedia
We also have to talk about Wikipedia – the other titan of reliable information on the internet. Wikipedia is often the first result on Google for a huge number of factual queries.
Unlike virtually every other top website, Wikipedia is not run by a corporate giant, it's run by a nonprofit charity (the Wikimedia Foundation) and written by volunteer contributors who are passionate (sometimes obsessively so) about their topics. There are no ads, no profit motive – just a mission to share knowledge.
Over the years, Wikipedia has earned a reputation as a highly trustworthy source for baseline information. It's certainly not perfect, but the vast majority of popular articles are backed by citations and monitored by editors. You can't just "cheat" Wikipedia with an entry about your company or brand – anything unsourced or promotional usually gets challenged or removed pretty fast. The people who write and maintain Wikipedia pages tend to really know their stuff (or at least care enough to research and cite it).
Crucially, AI systems and search engines lean on Wikipedia heavily. One study found that nearly 48% of the sources ChatGPT cites are from Wikipedia. (By contrast, Google's results rely on Wikipedia only ~6% of the time, since Google often pulls from a wider variety of sites.) In other words, Wikipedia's well-organized, citation-checked information is a pillar of the AI knowledge base. It's foundational. In fact, it's hard to imagine training a model like ChatGPT without a huge gulp of Wikipedia data – one analysis even called Wikipedia "the most important single source" used to train generative AI models like ChatGPT.
So, when we talk about the future of search and answer engines, it's clear Wikipedia will remain a bedrock. And because it's a charitable, community-driven project, it has a degree of neutrality and rigor that's tough to find elsewhere on the web.
TechRadar and the Rise of Trusted Publications
Beyond user-generated communities and encyclopedias, another piece of the puzzle is expert journalism and reviews. Take TechRadar, for example – a popular tech news and reviews site. This isn't a user forum or an open wiki; it's a publication staffed by tech journalists who test gadgets and report news. Sites like this are trusted voices in their niches. TechRadar in particular has been rated GREEN (highly credible) for trustworthiness by NewsGuard, an independent service that reviews journalistic standards. Importantly, TechRadar (like many reputable outlets) maintains editorial independence – they don't take payment for reviews.
ChatGPT and other AI answer engines are increasingly drawing from these high-quality publications as well. When you ask ChatGPT about "the best laptop of 2025," there's a good chance its answer is influenced by reviews from places like TechRadar and CNET.
In short, content from reputable, authentic sources is king. These are the kinds of platforms that both users and AI systems are gravitating toward for trustworthy answers.
The New Search Ecosystem
Based on all of the above, a clear pattern emerges: the future of search is being built on the back of real, authentic information from communities and experts.
These AI models rely on patterns in their training data. If that data is full of SEO-gamed pages or shallow marketing content, the answers will suffer. But feed the AI with Wikipedia's well-sourced facts, Reddit's collective wisdom, and TechRadar's expert insights, and suddenly its answers get a lot better.
It's telling that when ChatGPT's sources have been analyzed, Wikipedia dominated its references. The common thread is clear: authenticity and authority. The winners in the AI answer era are those platforms that have earned trust – either through community validation (votes, edits, moderation) or through professional standards and expertise.
EZY's Mission: Keeping It Real
This is exactly the philosophy we work on at EZY.AI. We believe that in order for information to remain relevant in the age of AI-driven search, it needs to live where authenticity lives. Rather than pumping out boring press releases or thin blog posts that nobody reads, our approach is to help you get real, valuable content onto the platforms that matter – the subreddits where your audience hangs out, the Wikipedia pages that inform the world, and the trusted sites that people (and AI) look to for answers. Whether you're a non-tech person with a story to share, a tech expert, an entrepreneur on the edge of innovation, or even a journalist looking to boost reach – you want your knowledge to appear in authentic channels. EZY.AI's platform is designed for exactly that: to amplify real, relevant information in the places that count.
By doing so, we ensure that when someone's asking ChatGPT or the next-gen Google about a topic related to you or your business, the AI will have the right data to work with – your data, in a form that's genuinely useful and unbiased.
The Road Ahead: A Walled Garden of Answers?
All of this raises a big question: Where is this heading? If AI answer engines keep users satisfied on-platform, what does that mean for the web at large? We're entering an era where ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Meta, and others may try to become a sort of walled garden of information. They don't really want to send you off to another site if they can help it. Why would they? If they can embed the information or service right into the chat, you'll stay engaged longer. We're already seeing early signs of this. For example, there are ChatGPT plugins and integrations that let you, say, book a restaurant or shop for a product without leaving the chat. Google's SGE (Search Generative Experience) might eventually pull in not just info but actionable buttons or content from partners directly in the results.
Imagine your GPT interface- all images of products, reviews can quite easily appear within this interface, right? Why send users off to another (your) website?
The reason is simple: control and monetization. Keep the user on your platform, and you can serve them ads or sponsored recommendations within the answer.
That could be enormously lucrative. Think about it – instead of the old model (user searches, clicks a link, maybe sees ads on that external site), the new model is user asks AI, AI gives answer with maybe one embedded ad or product placement in the answer itself. The AI company can charge for that prominence. Suddenly, the AI platform isn't just an answer engine – it's also an ad platform and perhaps even a transaction platform. No wonder Microsoft and Google are experimenting with ads in their AI chats already.
What does this mean for you? Well, your website can still sell products, gain users, sell services, promote messages- but this might all happen natively within GPT.
Global advertising spending is projected to surpass $1 trillion in 2025, doubling in a decade. If AI platforms can capture even a fraction of that by keeping you in their ecosystem, that's a huge business opportunity.
For users, this could be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's convenient – the AI can take you from question to solution instantly. On the other, it means the AI is mediating everything you see, and might prioritize partners or advertisers.
From our perspective at EZY.AI, this potential future reinforces why it's so critical to have your information in those trusted pipelines, early. If the AI won't always send people to you, you have to become part of the answer. That's why getting your brand, knowledge, or expertise represented on Reddit (organically through genuine engagement), on Wikipedia (factually and neutrally), or on respected sites is likely the smartest strategy going forward.
At EZY.AI, we're excited (and prepared) for this new world. We're here to help you navigate it by making sure your voice isn't lost in the shuffle, but instead amplified through authentic channels.
Will Websites Even Exist?
If you can have your products on Amazon, your blogs on Medium, your reviews on Reddit and your awards on award websites – then we should expect to see, for the first time ever, a reduction in the time spent building websites!
The traditional web model of "build a website, get traffic, convert visitors" is being disrupted by platforms that aggregate everything you need. Why spend months building a complex e-commerce site when Amazon handles payments, logistics, and customer service? Why create a company blog when Medium already has the audience and distribution? Why build a review system when Reddit communities provide authentic feedback?
We're witnessing the platformization of business presence. Instead of driving traffic to your domain, you'll optimize for discovery within these established ecosystems. The future might look less like "visit our website" and more like "find us everywhere" – embedded in the platforms where your customers already spend their time.
This doesn't mean websites will disappear entirely, but their role is fundamentally changing. They're becoming less about traffic generation and more about brand control and direct relationships. The question isn't whether websites will exist, but whether they'll remain the center of digital strategy – or just one node in a distributed network of platform presences.