The biggest websites in America still look familiar, but the way people move around the internet is starting to shift. Google remains far ahead of everyone else, YouTube continues to pull enormous traffic, and Reddit is still one of the country’s biggest destinations.
The more interesting change is happening lower down the rankings. ChatGPT has moved into the U.S. top 10, while Bing has suffered one of the sharpest traffic declines among major websites.
According to data highlighted by Search Engine Land and based on Semrush Traffic Analytics, ChatGPT’s U.S. traffic rose 48.38% year over year. Bing, meanwhile, fell 50.43%.
That contrast says a lot about how online discovery is changing.
Google and YouTube Still Dominate U.S. Web Traffic
Google remains the most visited website in the United States, attracting around 25.3 billion monthly visits as of July 2026. Despite years of speculation that generative AI could weaken traditional search, Google’s traffic actually increased 10.72% compared with the previous year. YouTube grew even faster, reaching about 10.3 billion monthly visits after a 36.6% year-over-year increase. Reddit remained in third place with approximately 2.61 billion visits. The concentration of traffic at the top of the web has barely changed, which suggests that AI has not suddenly broken the dominance of the internet’s largest platforms.
ChatGPT Has Become One of America’s Biggest Websites
ChatGPT’s growth is difficult to ignore because it has moved well beyond being viewed as a niche AI tool. The platform now attracts roughly 1.09 billion monthly U.S. visits and ranks ninth among the country’s most visited websites. Its traffic increased 48.38% year over year, placing it ahead of established search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo. That shift shows how quickly AI assistants are becoming part of normal online behavior. People are increasingly using ChatGPT for research, writing, comparisons, recommendations, summaries and general information gathering, activities that once began almost automatically with a traditional search engine.
Bing Traffic Drops More Than 50%
Bing moved in the opposite direction. Its U.S. website traffic fell 50.43% year over year, making it one of the biggest losers among major websites included in the comparison. The drop is notable because Microsoft has invested heavily in artificial intelligence across Bing and Copilot. Website traffic alone does not capture every way people use Microsoft’s AI products, especially with Copilot integrated across Windows and other services, but the decline at Bing.com still shows that adding AI features has not automatically translated into stronger direct website traffic.
Amazon, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo Also Lose Traffic
Several other major websites also recorded declines during the same period. Amazon’s U.S. traffic fell 15.31%, while Yahoo dropped 13.82%. DuckDuckGo declined 15.83%, an interesting result given the growing competition across search engines and AI-driven discovery tools. ESPN also moved lower in the rankings after traffic fell around 16%, while NBCNews.com dropped significantly in position after a 20.2% decline. These losses do not point to one single cause. Audience habits, search behavior, platform competition, ecommerce trends and the growing use of AI tools are all influencing where people spend their time online.
Temu’s Traffic Slump Shows It Is Not All About AI
Temu saw U.S. website traffic fall 28.55% year over year, but its decline highlights why website traffic changes should not always be blamed on artificial intelligence. Temu’s business faced pressure from changes affecting low-value imports into the United States, while the company also reduced parts of its U.S. advertising activity. Those factors had a direct impact on visibility and customer acquisition. The result is a useful reminder that website traffic can be shaped by regulation, advertising spend, pricing and wider business conditions just as much as search algorithms or AI platforms.
LinkedIn and Twitch Find More Room to Grow
Not every established platform struggled. LinkedIn increased U.S. visits by 15.48% to around 473.7 million monthly visits, helping it move into the top 20. Twitch also performed strongly, with traffic rising 25.6% and pushing the livestreaming platform higher in the rankings. USPS.com recorded growth of 12.04%, while Comix.to saw an even larger percentage increase further down the list. These websites have very different audiences, but their growth shows that users are still willing to visit specific destinations directly when those platforms provide a clear reason to return.
Overall Web Traffic Is Growing, but Slowly
Traffic across the top 150 U.S. websites increased by roughly 6.1% compared with the previous year. That is steady growth, but it looks small next to ChatGPT’s 48.38% increase or YouTube’s 36.6% rise. The difference suggests that the bigger story is not simply that the internet is attracting dramatically more users. Instead, traffic is moving between platforms, and a handful of websites are gaining a much larger share of that movement. Some of the fastest growth is now happening on platforms that did not exist in their current form only a few years ago.
AI Is Creating Another Starting Point for the Web
For a long time, the online journey was simple. A user opened Google, searched for something, clicked a result and visited a website. That pattern still happens at enormous scale, but it is no longer the only starting point. ChatGPT and similar AI tools now allow users to ask questions directly and receive an answer before visiting another website. In some cases, users may never click away. In others, they may follow a citation, recommendation or link provided by the AI system. This creates a different discovery path that publishers and marketers increasingly need to understand.
Website Publishers Should Watch More Than Google Rankings
The latest traffic figures do not suggest that Google search is collapsing. Google grew, YouTube grew and ChatGPT grew even faster, while Bing and DuckDuckGo lost ground. That creates a much more complicated picture than the idea that AI is simply replacing search. Website publishers are now dealing with an internet where discovery happens across search engines, AI assistants, video platforms, social networks and recommendation systems. Ranking in Google remains important, but relying on one traffic source has become increasingly risky. Strong brands, direct audiences, social channels, newsletters, video and visibility in AI-generated answers are all becoming part of the same traffic strategy.
What the Rankings Say About the Future of Web Discovery
ChatGPT reaching the U.S. top 10 is significant because it shows that AI assistants are becoming major destinations in their own right. Traditional websites are not disappearing, and Google remains dominant, but users now have more ways to begin an online search or research session. The websites that continue to grow will likely be those that give people a reason to visit directly while also remaining visible across search engines, AI platforms and other discovery channels.
Sources
Search Engine Land — The big winners and losers in U.S. website traffic over the past year
https://searchengineland.com/winners-losers-us-website-traffic-past-year-486843
Semrush — Traffic Analytics
https://www.semrush.com/analytics/traffic/