# Similarweb data: organic search visits fall 13% in US, AI referrals stay near 0.5%

Published: 2026-10-26T14:16:27.212Z · Source: Growth Memo (Kevin Indig) (https://www.growth-memo.com/p/organic-traffic-is-down-but-its-not)
Source date: 2026-10-26
Flags: Analyst study on vendor data — Similarweb modeled estimates, sample not representative of the national web
Entities: similarweb, ai-overviews, google

Kevin Indig of Growth Memo analyzed Similarweb's monthly traffic estimates for 10,000 domains each in the US and France (September 2023 to August 2026). For the 8,658 US and 7,730 French sites with complete organic estimates, organic search visits fell 13.2% in the US (19.9b to 17.3b) and 24.4% in France (4b to 3b) between August 2024 and August 2026, while paid search visits rose 21% and 17.3%. Publishers lost about 41.5% of organic visits in the US and 42.5% in France, and about 1% of domains accounted for 40.2% of gross lost visits in the US and 48.5% in France.

AI referrals grew fastest of the ten channels but reached 2.85% of organic-search traffic in the US and 2.44% in France, roughly 0.5% of total visits. Indig says the data describes modeled visits, not causes: it cannot show whether AI or paid search drove the organic losses, and the two countries' site lists differ. He attributes the larger French decline mostly to site selection, saying Google launched AI Overviews in France in July 2026.

Why it matters: Independent channel-mix data suggests organic losses are concentrated in publishers and large sites and run alongside growing paid search, while AI referrals stay a rounding error, which complicates the single-cause "AI is killing traffic" account.

## What this answers

**How much traffic do AI chatbots send compared with organic search?**

In Similarweb data for 10,000 US domains analyzed by Kevin Indig, AI referrals reached 2.85% of organic-search traffic in the US and 2.44% in France, which is about 0.5% of total visits.

**Is AI the main reason organic search traffic is falling?**

The analysis does not say so. Indig's Similarweb sample shows US organic search visits down 13.2% from August 2024 to August 2026 while paid search visits rose 21%, and he notes the data cannot establish whether AI or paid search caused the organic losses.


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