March AI Landscape: Claude's Global DAU Soars 848%, Gemini Surges Over 3x, ChatGPT Growth Slows

March AI Traffic Landscape Shows Increased Divergence, Claude Emerges as a Dark Horse, While Google's Search Foundation Remains Solid. Bank of America Securities released a report on April 9th, analyzing the AI traffic landscape in March based on data from Similarweb, Sensor Tower, and Statcounter. The data shows: Claude's monthly traffic surged by 90% month-on-month, with a global DAU increase of 848%, making it the biggest dark horse; Gemini continued its steady user growth with DAU increasing by over 3 times year-on-year; ChatGPT, while growing over 100% year-on-year, saw a month-on-month decline. Concurrently, Google's core search market share saw a slight year-on-year increase to 90%, indicating that new AI contenders have not yet substantially eroded its fundamental search base. It is precisely this stable foundation, coupled with Gemini's strong user growth, that led the firm to maintain its "buy" rating on Alphabet, with a price objective of $370, representing an approximate 16.6% upside from the current price of $317.32. Claude Leads Growth, Gemini Steady, Google Holds Ground The most attention-grabbing signal in March came from Anthropic. Similarweb data reveals Claude's global average daily web visits increased by 90% month-on-month to 20 million, and mobile DAU soared by 848% year-on-year to 9.7 million, with a 129% month-on-month increase. Bank of America analysts believe this explosive growth is primarily attributed to the accelerated penetration of Claude Code and its agent capabilities, along with positive word-of-mouth effects from model improvements. Meanwhile, ChatGPT's global web traffic decreased by 6% month-on-month, and mobile DAU fell by 13 million, creating a contrasting trend with Claude. In comparison, Gemini's growth shows greater sustainability. In March, global average daily web visits surged by 659% year-on-year to 84 million, and mobile DAU increased by 332% year-on-year to 89 million, up 9% month-on-month. The report points out that Gemini's traffic and user growth remain strong, while Google's overall traffic remained stable year-on-year, suggesting that Claude's growth is more about poaching users from other AI competitors rather than eroding Google's core search traffic. Statcounter data further supports this assessment. In March, Google's global search share increased by 24 basis points year-on-year to 90.0%, with its desktop share significantly rising by 409 basis points to 83.2%. Although the US market saw a year-on-year decline of 183 basis points to 85.0%, its absolute dominance remained solid. The combined average daily traffic of all emerging AI platforms is still less than 2% of Google's 2.8 billion visits.