Have you noticed a change in your search engine use? I definitely have and it’s a strong downward trend.
Last year I saw a stat that said the average person does fewer than 300 searches per month. I thought that was insanely low for my search usage and probably was very low for most developers and other tech people.
I just checked for myself and in March 2025 across all of my devices (computers and mobile), it is 211.
Just 211! Unbelievable. Were did all the searches go? I can only speculate for most people and be concrete for myself. They went into Chat. I don’t think I rely too heavily on AI, neither for coding or information in general. But it really struck me recently how much AI has changed the game. You can also clearly see this in StackOverflow language trends.
This matters for me personally because it’s an interesting pattern change. It matters for my business because discovery via search is an important flow of customers and users.
Three years ago I posed the question “Paying for search, am I crazy?” The answer, for me at least, was definitely not. It was worth it. Today I’m not so sure. I’m trying out a privacy-focused search engine from the Netherlands called Startpage. It’s not Kagi level of good, but my most important searchs don’t seem to go into either anymore.
We do live in interesting times, don’t we?
Share your thoughts? Discuss this article on Mastodon, BlueSky, or LinkedIn.