ChatGPT's website traffic drops for three months straight in August
OpenAI's ChatGPT, the super popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, has experienced a decline in monthly website visits for the third month in a row in August, according to analytics firm Similarweb. However, there are signs that the decline may be coming to an end, with schools back in session. Some schools in the United States as well as in India have already begun to embrace it.
ChatGPT's meteoric rise and recent decline
ChatGPT rapidly gained popularity, reaching 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after its launch. It became one of the fastest-growing consumer applications ever and now ranks among the top 30 websites globally. However, recent months have seen a decrease in traffic and usage, with a 3.2% drop in August to 1.43 billion visits. The average time spent on the site has also declined since March, from 8.7 minutes to seven minutes in August.
Possible reasons for the decline
OpenAI further expanded its reach by launching the ChatGPT app on the iOS platform in May, potentially diverting some traffic away from its website. Furthermore, despite ChatGPT's meteoric rise, fresh competitors have entered the scene, such as Google's Bard chatbot, which made its debut this year. Separately, Microsoft's search engine Bing offers a free chatbot powered by OpenAI.
Schools may revive ChatGPT's fortunes
Despite the decline, August saw a slight increase in worldwide unique visitors to 180.5 million users from 180 million. The return of schools in September may boost ChatGPT's traffic, as some educational institutions have begun to embrace the technology. David F. Carr from Similarweb observes, "Students seeking homework help appears to be part of the story: the percentage of younger users of the website dropped over the summer and is now starting to bounce back."
