Google says web traffic isn’t declining. Google Gemini and five other LLMs disagree.

Last week, Google published a blog post rebutting claims of declining website traffic from Google Search. 

“Overall, total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has been relatively stable year-over-year,” the post said. “Additionally, average click quality has increased and we’re actually sending slightly more quality clicks to websites than a year ago (by quality clicks, we mean those where users don’t quickly click back — typically a signal that a user is interested in the website).”

It said that reports of declines in aggregate traffic were based on “flawed methodologies, isolated examples or traffic changes that occurred before the rollout of AI features in Search.”

We at MarTech have heard anecdotal reports of declines from website publishers. However, as we all know, “the plural of anecdote is not data.” So we asked Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Qwen and Deepseek if referrals from Google Search are growing or declining. (We would have asked Microsoft’s Bing Copilot, but we forgot it existed.)

Google Gemini was not impressed by its creator’s claims.

ChatGPT gave a qualified, journalistic answer, but put the word “declining” in bold.

Perplexity’s reply was as straightforward as you can get.

Claude was more succinct.

Now those answers are all from bloated, American-style LLMs. What did the lean, Chinese LLMs find?

DeepSeek lived up to its pared-down reputation.

Qwen had a similar response, but said it with a nuance that echoed Bill Clinton’s statement, “It depends on what your definition of is is.”

So, there you have it. We report, they answer, you decide.