How Media Attention Drives AI Chatbot Adoption: Traffic vs. Citations (Aug 2024 – Jul 2025)
In the fast-growing world of AI chatbots, media visibility has proven to be a crucial driver of adoption and traffic. As part of The AI Big Bang Study 2025, we analyzed the media citations of the top 10 AI chatbots, and the results clearly highlight the significant role media plays in shaping public perception and usage trends.
Key Statistics:
- 7.7 Million Media Citations: From August 2024 to July 2025, the top 10 AI chatbots generated over 7.7 million media mentions, with an average of 644.2K citations per month.
- DeepSeek's Decline: While DeepSeek initially saw a dramatic rise in citations — particularly in February 2025 (over 1M mentions) — its attention dropped by 88% over the next five months, indicating a strong correlation between media spikes and traffic surges.
- ChatGPT and Gemini: ChatGPT (2.4M citations) and Gemini (1.8M citations) continued to dominate the citation rankings. Despite ChatGPT’s drop in citations (–19.66%), both tools showed recovery signs in June-July 2025 as media visibility surged again.
The Correlation Between Media Citations and Web Traffic
In our study, we found that surges in media attention often directly correlated with spikes in traffic. When media mentions rose, web visits followed suit, demonstrating that visibility plays a central role in adoption momentum for AI chatbots.
- The February 2025 spike in DeepSeek’s citations (surpassing 500K mentions) directly aligned with its highest web traffic month.
- Similarly, Grok experienced a 224.74% increase in YoY media citations, boosting its web traffic as its media visibility rose.
- Claude and Perplexity saw steady and consistent growth, thanks to regular media mentions maintaining a strong public presence throughout the year.
The Study Methodology
This data comes from The AI Big Bang Study 2025, a comprehensive analysis that looked at 10,500+ AI tools and tracked their media citations and web traffic over a 12-month period (Aug 2024 – Jul 2025). The study benchmarks these AI chatbots across 8 key indicators, grouped into three categories: Visibility & Awareness, Momentum, and User Experience.
Why Media Visibility Matters
The increased visibility in media coverage acts as a reinforcement loop, influencing adoption rates and maintaining the dominance of top players like ChatGPT. The infographic below illustrates how these citation trends — as well as the connection between media attention and web traffic — reveal the core dynamics driving chatbot adoption.
See the Full Study
For further insights on the top 10 AI chatbots, including their web traffic growth, market share, and user experience trends, explore The AI Big Bang Study 2025 on our website. There you’ll find a full breakdown of citations, web visits, and growth trends for each chatbot, plus key methodological details that power the study.