Perplexity's US searches fell 55% while app users rose 94% — which metric decides popularity?

raja314 · reddit · 2026-11-14

The author compiled four different popularity metrics for AI tools in October 2026 — US Google searches, Chrome Web Store users, chatbot visits/app users, and OpenRouter developer usage — and they disagree sharply.

Perplexity is the clearest split: US searches fell 55% year-over-year, but Similarweb shows US app users up 94%; in September it sent 5.85% of AI referral traffic to websites vs only 1.3% of chatbot visits in May.
ChatGPT leads every count: 124M monthly US searches (flat), 52.7% of chatbot visits, 46.4% of app users, and 80.48% of referrals; Gemini is second on all three (27.3%, 27.7%, 10.91%).
Claude is the outlier: searches grew from 1.22M to 9.14M/month (7x+), but only 8.9% of chatbot visits and 0.95% of referrals.
Beyond chatbots: Grammarly hit 40M Chrome Web Store users, 8x the next AI extension; Claude Code processed 1.46T tokens on OpenRouter on Oct 17; Janitor AI passed Character AI on search (4.09M vs 2.24M).
Caveats: one month of search data, coarse Google volume buckets, and "gemini"/"claude" catching a star sign and people named Claude.

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Perplexity's US searches fell 55% while app users rose 94% — which metric decides popularity?

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