ChatGPT Holds 79.9% of Australia’s Chatbot Market in Nov 2025
Image Credit: Jacky Lee
A fresh set of product changes from Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI over the past week has put competitive pressure back on a core battleground for chatbots: distribution and click through to the open web. In Australia, Statcounter’s latest monthly snapshot for AI chatbot referrals shows a market where one service dominates outbound traffic, while others sit close together in the next tier.
Australia Snapshot: Who Sends the Most Chatbot Referrals
Statcounter’s “AI chatbot market share” view for Australia lists the latest available month as November 2025, showing the following referral shares:
ChatGPT: 79.93%
Perplexity: 8.29%
Microsoft Copilot: 8.23%
Google Gemini: 2.42%
Claude: 1.13%
For context, the worldwide chart for November 2025 shows ChatGPT at 81.85%, followed by Perplexity 11.05%, Microsoft Copilot 3.07%, Google Gemini 2.97%, Claude 1.05%, and Deepseek 0.01%.
Making Links More Visible in AI Answers
On December 10, 2025, Google said it is increasing the number of inline links in AI Mode and adding short contextual introductions explaining why a link might be helpful to visit. It also said it will highlight links from user news subscriptions in a dedicated carousel, bringing this first to the Gemini app, with AI Overviews and AI Mode to follow.
The same Google post describes a pilot commercial partnership program with a range of publishers to explore how AI might drive more engaged audiences, including testing AI powered article overviews in Google News pages for participating publications.
Independent coverage from The Verge framed the change as part of Google’s push to show more sources in AI Mode and to adjust how those sources are presented.
For a referrals based metric like Statcounter’s, link placement and link design changes are directly relevant to the user action being measured: whether people click through to third party sites from an AI interface. What is not established is the magnitude of impact, because Statcounter does not attribute shifts in share to specific product changes.
New Surfaces in Browsers and Live Voice
Google’s push into the browser continued with Gemini appearing inside Chrome on iPhone and iPad in the United States rollout. Google’s own help documentation says Gemini in Chrome on iPhone requires the user to be 18 or over and in the US, signed in to Chrome, not using Incognito mode, and using Chrome in English, with availability rolling out over time.
The Verge reported the Chrome iOS change as a UI level integration that lets users ask Gemini about the current webpage or request a summary.
Separately, on December 12, 2025, Google announced an updated Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio model for live voice agents. Google said it is available in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI and has started rolling out in Gemini Live and Search Live. Google also published evaluation style claims about improvements in function calling reliability and instruction following compared with earlier versions.
Taken together, these updates point to a competition pattern that is less about a single chatbot app and more about being present at the moment of need: in the browser, in live search experiences, and in voice agent platforms.
Bundling and Model Choice in Workplace Chat
On December 11, 2025, Microsoft said OpenAI’s GPT 5.2 is being brought to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio, and that GPT 5.2 is accessible via a model selector in Copilot Chat and Copilot Studio.
Reuters also reported OpenAI’s launch of GPT 5.2 during the same period, framing it as part of competitive dynamics with other major model providers.
For market competition, this matters because it targets retention inside existing software suites. If users can switch models inside a familiar enterprise interface, the competitive fight shifts from “which chatbot do you open” to “which assistant is the default inside your workflow.”
What This Could Mean for Australia’s Referral Picture
Statcounter’s Australia snapshot shows that the leader already controls most chatbot driven outbound traffic, while the next two players are close to each other. That makes distribution moves and link design changes worth watching, especially if and when browser integrations and search linked AI surfaces expand more broadly beyond the current US limited requirements described for Gemini in Chrome on iPhone.
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