I recently saw this Similarweb Global AI traffic share chart: link.
It’s clean, shareable, and feels directionally right but it’s hard to fully trust the numbers since Similarweb doesn’t clearly publish their methodology (at least I couldn’t find it).
So while Similarweb gives us a compelling visual, Cloudflare released their 2025 Internet Year in Review, which is based on actual traffic Cloudflare sees across its global network.
A few AEO takeaways worth digging into:
• AI platforms now dominate Internet services
Based on Cloudflare’s data, the top AI services in 2025 were led by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. See the full list here: link
• GoogleBot is still the largest crawler but AI bots are now right behind it. GPTBot, BingBot, Meta, and Amazon bots are among the highest-volume verified bots on the Internet. link
• AI bots generated ~4.2% of all HTML requests. link
• AI is not very generous.
Cloudflare’s crawl-to-refer ratios show heavy crawling with minimal traffic sent back. link
And finally, watch out if you find yourself on a .christmas domain! link