Playlist

Traditional Search Engines See 25% Drop in Activity in 2025

27 Oct. 09:05

Source

In the second half of 2025, users increasingly turned away from traditional search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, preferring AI-driven tools instead. Many note that AI assistants provide direct, ready-made answers without the need to open multiple links.

As a result, the overall traffic of traditional search platforms — particularly for science, education, and healthcare queries — decreased by around 25%.

Interest in news websites also declined: compared to 2024, usage fell from 2.3 billion visits to 1.7 billion. Moreover, 69% of all searches now end without any clicks to external pages (up from 56% last year), a phenomenon known as “zero-click search.”

At the same time, engagement with ChatGPT surged dramatically — by 212%, reaching 47 billion interactions over the year.

For the first time in nine years, Google’s market share slightly dropped, now standing at 89.7%.

According to Yandex, the integration of AI-generated answers in October 2024 boosted daily active users beyond 13 million, with over 80 million people overall interacting with its responses. The share of users clicking through to original sources via Alice remained stable.

Meanwhile, the combined activity of the ten most popular chatbots increased by about 80%, totaling nearly 55 billion sessions.

















Singapore Pledges Up to $55,000 Per Child to Boost Falling Birth Rates

24 Aug. 12:48

Source

Facing a record drop in fertility rates, Singapore is significantly expanding its family support framework. According to Bloomberg, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced increases in direct financial assistance alongside enhanced housing benefits for young families.

Under the updated policy, every Singaporean child up to the age of 17 will be eligible to receive up to 70,000 Singapore dollars (approximately $55,000 USD) in total support, which includes cash payouts, educational grants, and related benefits. The government is also expanding paid parental leave and capping monthly out-of-pocket costs for government-subsidized childcare at 150 Singapore dollars.

These interventions aim to reverse a severe demographic decline, marked by last year's fertility rate drop to 0.87 children per woman, while over 20% of the country's population is currently aged 65 or older.