This is interesting data but is not really a useful estimate of search engine market share in 2025.
<meta name="referrer" content="origin">
(I also had a good chuckle at them choosing to break the typo chain with this directive)
Do we know if they're sending the referer header? Maybe there is no way to know. It would just be interesting to see that trend over time.
Does this mean other countries are better at using computers/more conscious users, and changing the default search engine/browser? It might be related to Edge being the default for Windows computers, but this is overridden by the users in other countries. Or is it because Microsoft is pushing more ads and is trusted more in the USA?
The second question is how much OpenAI disrupted the overall Google traffic. That's probably the most important metric anyone wants to see.
I see how (in Italy/Poland) me, my friends and relatives have turned towards Gemini for the lots of queries.
People walking around the streets and asking Gemini for restaurants, directions or any general questions is starting to be extremely common, but I doubt that Cloudflare can measure those (afterall it never goes through a browser since Gemini app is embedded in the home button of Android phones).
I also doubt that Cloudflare measures the gargantuan amount of queries people do through, e.g., their AI desktop apps or stuff like Claude Code, that effectively replaces google searches.
At the least it can be inferred that Google has fundamentally changed their main product to mimic a competitor, which is something you just don’t do if everything’s OK.
Do you see a similar transition in your network?
PaulKeeble•1h ago
ivape•1h ago
Semaphor•1h ago
onlyrealcuzzo•57m ago
Every post about Google for years has been people saying it's terrible and dead.
Kagi gets talked about on here constantly, and it's not even on the list (though I suspect there's a reason?)
Even within Google, about a year ago, everyone was saying that Google was dead because of Perplexity, which is barely a blip.
It's kind of shocking to see DuckDuckGo is only about 1%, with everything you hear and how much you hear it within certain bubbles.
brookst•38m ago
Compared to a year ago, Google has declined from 89.487% to 88.915%. Just half a percent, but IMO it will accelerate.
Meanwhile OpenAI has gone from 0.194% to 0.226% in just three months (they weren’t on previous quarter’s reports).
Sure, it’ll be years before Google drops to 50%. But it will happen.
EbNar•26m ago
Being at least 10€/month for the only "useful" tier is a powerful reason for that...
Maybe also Kagi being a metasearch engine reduces its visibility? Just speculating, I obviously don't know how it really works.
toast0•19m ago
They are terrible, but that doesn't mean anybody else is good or better. And being better at search isn't enough anyway [1]. Also, when you give Google less of your searches, personalization drops off and it gets even worse, but most people give all their searches to google so they see the benefit of personalization if they compare.
[1] When Yahoo did user research on search, one of their findings was that if you asked users which results were better, there was a strong and consistent preference towards results that were shown as Google results, regardless of the actual results. It's been forever since I saw those reports, so I don't remember the numbers, and the numbers are likely different today anyway, but that's a huge barrier to adoption that you have to manage.
jorams•8m ago
Not that I'd expect them high up on the list, but Kagi sends the following response header:
As a result the browser won't send a Referer header with outgoing links, completely excluding them from this report.