Which AI assistants each market uses and where they get their answers: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Naver, Yandex, Doubao and DeepSeek, and which crawlers to allow

Which AI each market uses

Statcounter's AI chatbot share measures clicks each AI sends to websites, not users. From 9 October 2026 many ChatGPT links stopped carrying a referrer and were counted as direct visits, so this page uses September figures.

• US: in Pew's February 2026 survey, 49% of adults use AI chatbots: ChatGPT 44%, Gemini 24%, Copilot 17%, Meta AI 14%, Grok 8%, Claude 6%. 60% have read an AI summary at the top of search results.Pew (2026-06-17)
• Google publishes only global figures: AI Overviews has more than 2.5 billion monthly users; AI Mode more than 1 billion, now merged with AI Overviews into one experience; the Gemini app 1 billion users.Google I/O (2026-05-19), Alphabet Q2, Alphabet Q3
• Indonesia: audience share in May 2026 was ChatGPT 45.7%, Gemini 31.2%, Claude 7.8% (Sensor Tower). AI Mode has supported Indonesian, Japanese and Korean since September 2025.Databoks, Google
• Vietnam: in a July 2025 survey, 78% of internet users had used AI in the past three months: ChatGPT 81%, Gemini 51%, Meta AI 36%, the local AI Hay 9% and Zalo's Kiki 3%.Việt Nam News
• Japan: in a February 2026 survey, 54.7% of internet users had used generative AI in the past year: ChatGPT 36.2%, Gemini 25.0%, Copilot 13.3%, Claude 4.3%, Perplexity 4.0%.ICT Research Institute
• South Korea: monthly app users in September 2026 were ChatGPT 24.7 million, Gemini 9.87 million and Claude 4.04 million. Naver's AI summaries (AI Briefing) reach 30 million people a month, and its AI tab passed 10 million users in July.byline (2026-10-13), byline (2026-07-15)
• Russia: in September 2026, 55% of people aged 12+ used AI each month: Yandex's Alice AI 59 million, DeepSeek 13 million, GigaChat 6 million (websites and apps only). Alice AI quick answers inside Yandex search reached 49.5 million people a month in Q2 and appear on about 42% of queries.kod.ru (2026-10-16), Trashbox (2026-07-29)
• Mainland China: QuestMobile counts 546 million monthly users of AI-native apps in September 2026: Doubao 419 million, Qwen 158 million, DeepSeek 123 million, Yuanbao 37.33 million. Statcounter's China page reflects only sites running its code, not Chinese users at large.Tencent News (2026-10-20), Sohu (2026-11-03)
• Europe and the UK: in 2025, 32.7% of people aged 16–74 in the EU had used generative AI, and 63.8% of those aged 16–24. Statcounter for September: Europe ChatGPT 78.8%, Gemini 12.8%; UK ChatGPT 79.8%, Gemini 10.2%.Eurostat (2026-02-10), Statcounter Europe, Statcounter UK

ChatGPT

• Microsoft's Web IQ is built on Bing's global index, and its official product page says it powers AI assistants including Copilot and ChatGPT.Microsoft Web IQ
• OpenAI's crawlers are set separately: OAI-SearchBot is for search, and blocking it keeps you out of ChatGPT search answers (robots.txt changes take about 24 hours); GPTBot is for training and works independently; ChatGPT-User fetches pages when a user asks, and robots.txt may not apply to it.OpenAI crawlers

Copilot and Bing

• Microsoft says Copilot and Microsoft 365 build answers from Bing's content; the only crawler is Bingbot.Bing blog (2026-10-30)
• From 1 February 2027, a Bingbot meta tag on the page (ai-grounding) controls whether content may be used in AI answers; disallowextended limits it to Microsoft's own products and excludes third parties such as Web IQ. Training preferences go in robots.txt as __usage_ai-training. None of these overrides a robots.txt block on Bingbot.Bing blog (2026-10-30)
• Today NOARCHIVE and NOCACHE do this job; after 1 March 2027 Bing stops treating them as training or citation preferences.Bing blog (2026-10-30)

Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode

• All use Google's search index: any page that can be indexed and shown with a snippet is eligible for AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no extra technical requirements. The only controls are Googlebot's robots rules and nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex.Google AI features
• Google-Extended is only a token in robots.txt. It governs Gemini training and the web citations of the Gemini app and Vertex AI grounding; Google says it doesn't affect Search indexing and isn't a ranking signal. Blocking it doesn't take you out of AI Overviews or AI Mode, but it does take you out of the Gemini app's web citations.Google common crawlers
• Since August 2026 Search Console has a setting that keeps a site out of generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode.Search Console help
• Google-Agent acts on web pages for users, and such user-triggered fetches usually ignore robots.txt.Google user-triggered fetchers

Perplexity and Claude

• Perplexity runs its own index of what it calls hundreds of billions of pages. PerplexityBot is for search results, not training; Perplexity-User is a user-triggered fetcher that usually ignores robots.txt.Perplexity blog, Perplexity crawlers
• Anthropic lists Brave Search (all products) plus TurboPuffer and Parallel Web Systems as web search providers. Claude has three crawlers: ClaudeBot for training, Claude-SearchBot for the search index (blocking it lowers visibility in search results), and Claude-User for fetches when a user asks.Anthropic subprocessors, Claude crawler help

Naver and Yandex

• Naver's AI answers cite mainly its own platforms (Blog, Cafe, Clip) plus government and other official sources; one third-party count found 46.5% of citations from Naver Blog. Its crawler is Yeti, and its robots guide lists no separate AI crawler.byline (2025-03-24), ditoday (2026-10-15), Naver robots guide
• Yandex's Alice AI rewrites the question and calls Yandex search, preferring top-ranked sources. YandexBot crawls the main index; YandexAdditional separately controls whether content can appear in quick answers and Alice AI answers, and applies only to indexed pages. Yandex has no training-only crawler.Yandex Webmaster help, Yandex crawler list

AI in China

• Doubao: the web search plugin on Volcano Engine searches the whole web by default and can add Douyin encyclopedia and Toutiao articles; whether the Doubao app uses the same setup isn't stated. ByteDance's crawler, Bytespider, has no official documentation and has been reported to ignore robots.txt.Volcano Engine docs, Fortune (2024-10-03)
• DeepSeek's web search API says it is "powered by DeepSeek's own search engine"; whether the app uses the same isn't stated, and its crawler has no official documentation.DeepSeek docs
• Tencent's Yuanbao launched with WeChat search and Sogou, covering WeChat official-account articles; according to a Tencent insider in 2026, Yuanbao search combines QQ Browser and Sogou technology and doesn't index sites that block crawlers.Beijing News (2024-05-30), Huxiu (2026-11-03)
• Baidu's AI search uses Baidu's search results; the crawler is Baiduspider, with no separate crawler for its ERNIE models.Baidu Qianfan docs, Baidu help