As of June 2024, global searches for the keyword "generative AI" had experienced an increase in the previous year. The search terms for generative artificial intelligence surged in popularity from mid-February to early March 2024, hitting a score of 100 index points in the week ending March 3. Interest in "generative AI" frequently coincides with searches for ChatGPT, an AI chatbot model developed by the United States-based research company OpenAI.

As of June 2024, global Google searches for the word "ChatGPT" increased again after a slight decline by the end of 2024. Interest in the chatbot, developed by the U.S.-based OpenAI and launched in November 2022, started rising in the week ending December 3, 2022. Recently, growing demand for information on ChatGPT made the keyword hit a peak of 100 index points during the week ending on June 2, 2024. ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is a chatbot and AI-powered auto-generative text system able to give human-sounding replies and reproduce human-like interactions when prompted.

As of January 2025, online search engine Bing accounted for 12.23 percent of the global desktop search market, while market leader Google had a share of around 78.83 percent. Meanwhile, Yahoo's market share was 3.07 percent. Google in the global market Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the search engine market, while the shares of all other tools has been rather lopsided. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising. Its parent corporation, Alphabet, was one of the biggest internet companies worldwide as of 2023, with a market capitalization of 1,6 trillion U.S. dollars. The company has also expanded its services to mail, productivity tools, enterprise products, mobile devices, and other ventures. As a result, Google earned one of the highest tech company revenues in 2023 with roughly 305.6 billion U.S. dollars. Search engine usage in different countries Google is the most frequently used search engine worldwide. But in some countries, its’ alternatives are leading or competing with it to some extent. As of the last quarter of 2023, more than 63 percent of internet users in Russia used Yandex, whereas Google users were nearly 36 percent. Meanwhile, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, despite a strong percentage decrease of internet users in the country accessing it. In other countries, like Japan and Mexico, people tend to use Yahoo along with Google. In the first quarter of 2022 nearly 56 percent of the respondents in Japan said that they had used Yahoo in the past four weeks. In the same year, over 27 percent of users in Mexico said they used Yahoo. Another search engine, Bing, operated by Microsoft, was the second most popular search engine in the United Kingdom after Google.

In the first quarter of 2020 - at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Peru, the category that experienced the greatest growth in Google searches was health, with a 34 percent increase against the same period the previous year. Searches in the food category came in second, with a 26 percent growth compared to the first three months of 2019.

As of June 2024, global searches for the keyword "AI-powered search" experienced a relative increase since November of the previous year. Despite peaking in popularity by the end of October 2023, hitting a score of 100 index points, interest in the trend set by chatbots performing online searches dropped in the following months but became steadier throughout the first half of 2024.

According to data from Pi Datametrics, Google search volumes from January to April 2020 increased across almost all categories compared to the same period in 2019. The coronavirus outbreak may have led to the rise in search volume for some of the categories, including "Things to do at home", "Food & drink", and "Fitness equipment & classes".

Google searches for "Netflix" in Mexico increased nine percent on March 15, 2020, compared to the average registered on Sundays from January 19 and March 8 in the same year. On the other hand, online searches for restaurants and movie theatres in the North American country decreased 15 and 16 percent respectively. The change was linked to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the COVID-19. Meanwhile, in Latin America and the Caribbean altogether, the changes were more pronounced.

Google searches for "Netflix" in Latin America and the Caribbean increased 47 percent on March 15, 2020, compared to the average observed on Sundays from January 19 and March 8 in the same year. Meanwhile, online searches for restaurants and movie theatres in the region decreased 34 and 42 percent respectively. The change was linked to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the COVID-19.

Google searches for "Netflix" in Colombia increased 30 percent on March 15, 2020, compared to the average recorded on Sundays from January 19 and March 8 in the same year. But online searches for restaurants and movie theatres in the country decreased 19 and 41 percent respectively. The change was linked to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the COVID-19. The disease also was predicted to lead to a 400 percent increase in the usage of WhatsApp in Colombia.

In Brazil, Google searches for "Netflix" increased nine percent on March 15, 2020, compared to the average registered on Sundays from January 19 and March 8 in the same year. But web searches for restaurants and movie theatres in the country decreased 20 and 47 percent respectively. The change was accredited to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the COVID-19. It has been estimated that Brazil would have over 150 million internet users in 2020.

In Chile, Google searches for "Netflix" increased 11 percent on March 15th, 2020, compared to the average observed on Sundays from January 19 and March 8 in the same year. Meanwhile, web searches for restaurants and movie theatres in the South American country decreased 51 and 47 percent respectively. The changes were accredited to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the COVID-19. In overall Latin America and the Caribbean, internet users googled Netflix 47 percent more times, on average.

According to Google's search data from 2022, the most common query by Indians were 'Satta' and 'Cricbuzz', both queries related to online lottery betting (also known as Satta in Hindi) and cricket. These common search queries provide an insight into the Indian content consumption patterns. Video content was sought out actively, also evident by the fact that the video-sharing platform had the highest share of monthly social network users in the country that same year.

Optimization of video streaming

Not surprisingly, video content is witnessing exponential growth in recent years. It is evident in the fact that video streaming accounts for a major share of online mobile traffic across the nation. Recent trends suggest an increase in consumption of video over graphic or text content. Hence, a sound implementation of SEO in videos has become a necessity for a successful content creating channel. One of the major optimization strategies is to cater to the demographic of the nation , which incorporates efficient description, headline, and tag implementation.

Keyword search trends Searches related to local preferences are gaining momentum, rendering local SEO invaluable to promote visibility of the content. Phrases like “near me” and “close to me” have witnessed a significant increase in their frequency of appearances in queries. Since the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the latter part of 2020 has seen a significant rise in the usage of queries related to the pandemic. This is testament to the influence of recent events on keywords and optimized phrases for improved channel visibility.

In Brazil, Google searches for "alcohol" (in the context of alcohol-based sanitizer) increased by 369 percent on March 16th, 2020, compared to the average registered from March 11th to 13th in the same year. Web searches for N95 masks increased by 96 percent, while searches for "coffee filter" (in the context of using coffee filters as face masks) increased some 140 percent. The change was accredited to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the COVID-19.

From March 2024 to March 2025, global interest in the search term “solo travel” on Google increased overall. Over the period considered, the keyword reached its highest level of popularity in the week ending December 29, 2024. Meanwhile, Google searches for the term “digital nomads” peaked in the week ending September 8, 2024.

According to data collected by Pi Datametrics, Google searches for Toyota in the United States increased by 48.3 percent year-over year between the year ending in April 2022 and the year ending in April 2023. Between May 2022 and April 2023, Toyota was the most searched for car brand on U.S. Google.

According to a 2021 survey in Brazil, half of the internet users surveyed in the country stated to have searched for health or health services-related information on the internet, down from 53 percent of respondents in the year previous year. In March 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 led to an increase of searches on Google for items such as alcohol-based sanitizer.

In the most recently reported fiscal year, Google's revenue amounted to 348.16 billion U.S. dollars. Google's revenue is largely made up by advertising revenue, which amounted to 264.59 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. As of October 2024, parent company Alphabet ranked first among worldwide internet companies, with a market capitalization of 2,02 billion U.S. dollars. Google’s revenue Founded in 1998, Google is a multinational internet service corporation headquartered in California, United States. Initially conceptualized as a web search engine based on a PageRank algorithm, Google now offers a multitude of desktop, mobile and online products. Google Search remains the company’s core web-based product along with advertising services, communication and publishing tools, development and statistical tools as well as map-related products. Google is also the producer of the mobile operating system Android, Chrome OS, Google TV as well as desktop and mobile applications such as the internet browser Google Chrome or mobile web applications based on pre-existing Google products. Recently, Google has also been developing selected pieces of hardware which ranges from the Nexus series of mobile devices to smart home devices and driverless cars. Due to its immense scale, Google also offers a crisis response service covering disasters, turmoil and emergencies, as well as an open source missing person finder in times of disaster. Despite the vast scope of Google products, the company still collects the majority of its revenue through online advertising on Google Site and Google network websites. Other revenues are generated via product licensing and most recently, digital content and mobile apps via the Google Play Store, a distribution platform for digital content. As of September 2020, some of the highest-grossing Android apps worldwide included mobile games such as Candy Crush Saga, Pokemon Go, and Coin Master.

Online searches for terms related to "AI text generators" in the United States reached 44.64 thousand in January 2024. This represents a growth of over 49 percent in the monthly search volume for this query compared to the same month in the previous year. Meanwhile, searches for "ai search engine" accumulated to 7.59 thousand in the country, while searches for "text to video ai" grew to 6.45 thousand. Globally, the interest in artificially powered tools like ChatGPT has spiked over the last year, as well as for its developing company OpenAI.

In 2022, search advertising spending amounted to 185.35 billion U.S. dollars worldwide. The expenditure was forecast to increase by approximately six percent annually until 2028, reaching close to 261 billion U.S. dollars.

Search Advertising
Search advertising, or search engine advertising (SEA), refers to the placement of ads on search result pages above or next to organic search results. As these ads target local and keyword-related factors, they have a higher conversion probability, making them a popular tool for online marketers. In the past few years, search advertising has become one of the leading forms of digital advertising worldwide, seeing annual growth in spending. In 2019, global search ad spend stood at nearly 106.5 billion U.S. dollars, trailing only behind display ad expenditures. As consumers are increasingly using their phones for search requests, spending on mobile search advertising is set to increase in the following years.

Leading segment drivers
The United States is the world’s leading market for search advertising, as well as the segment’s top spender. In 2019, over 55 billion U.S. dollars were spent on search advertising, and according to the latest forecasts, spending will surpass 86 billion U.S. dollars by 2023. In return, revenue from search ads is expected to grow by roughly ten percent in 2020. Looking at the placement of ads and the allocation of search advertising budgets, Google stands out as the primary recipient. In 2018, advertisers reported allocating around 60 percent of their search advertising budgets towards the U.S. tech giant.

Between June 2022 and March 2023, the traffic volume for the keyword "AI" has tripled, going from around 7.9 million monthly searches to more than 30.4 million during the last month of the measured period. General interest in artificial intelligence (AI) has exploded in markets like the United States by the end of 2022. Likewise, interest for the application programming interfaces (API's) and plugins of artificial intelligence solutions, especially those of ChatGPT, has also seen a major increase since the release of the tool in November of 2022.

The artificial intelligence market

Valued at around 142.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, the artificial intelligence market is one the most promising tech segments for the rest of the decade, with more than five billion U.S. dollars invested in startups - the most notable being the Californian company OpenAI and its flagship application ChatGPT. Disruptive as it is, the adoption of AI has already sparked an alert for several industries, likely to affect job markets and thus raising concerns about cybercrime and other online misdeeds.

The future of online search?

Of most industries, the impact of the new tool developed by OpenAI may be felt by the online search market like a global earthquake. With chatbots providing search results in a dialogue format, the trend of AI-powered search engines unleashed by ChatGPT threw giant companies like Google and Microsoft into a race with startups and other competitors to present the best candidate for this disruptive (and experimental) online solution.