1. Market Overview: 12 Categories Accelerating Together
Rolling up to top-level categories: General AI +15.7%, Writing & Design +14.0%, Productivity +15.1% all outpaced the +14.3% headline. For the first time in six months, growth is broad-based — Image (+5.8%), Video (+8.8%) and Business (+12.7%), the high-beta categories from 2024, all returned to positive growth. Only Life Assistant lagged at −1.4%.
Where did the ~+1.9B incremental visits come from? Decomposition:
- Top-3 (ChatGPT + Gemini + Claude) contributed +1.19B, ~62% of total growth;
- Chinese models (DeepSeek + Doubao + Kimi + MiniMax etc.) added ~+0.15B;
- Writing & Design (Canva / Grammarly / QuillBot) added a steady +0.20B;
- The long tail (~19k sites) added ~+0.5B — the rally isn’t limited to the top names.
2. Top 15 Leaderboard
Sorted by March visits — identical to the default AI-Web product library view. MoM is vs February 2026.
| # | Product | Category | Visits | MoM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  ChatGPT chatgpt.com | General AI | 5.73B | +7.1% |
| 2 |  Gemini gemini.google.com | General AI | 2.60B | +22.9% |
| 3 |  Canva canva.com | Writing&Design | 981.6M | +14.4% |
| 4 |  Claude claude.ai | General AI | 613.7M | +111.4% |
| 5 |  DeepSeek deepseek.com | General AI | 350.8M | +28.4% |
| 6 |  Grok grok.com | Programming | 326.3M | +9.3% |
| 7 |  Character.AI character.ai | Characters&Fun | 192.6M | +10.3% |
| 8 |  Notion AI notion.so | Productivity | 183.9M | +13.1% |
| 9 |  Perplexity perplexity.ai | General AI | 166.8M | +8.5% |
| 10 |  Doubao doubao.com | General AI | 158.4M | +62.5% |
| 11 |  Google AI Studio aistudio.google.com | General AI | 127.9M | +1.7% |
| 12 |  Copilot copilot.microsoft.com | Productivity | 123.8M | +26.2% |
| 13 |  JanitorAI janitorai.com | Characters&Fun | 91.2M | +8.8% |
| 14 |  Quizlet quizlet.com | Education | 82.2M | +1.6% |
| 15 |  Suno suno.com | Audio | 75.0M | +10.7% |
3. Headline Event: Claude Doubled, Now Ranked #4
claude.ai jumped from 290M visits in February to 614M in March — +324M incremental, the 3rd-largest absolute gain of the month (behind only ChatGPT +379M and Gemini +483M). It is the first time Claude has cracked the global top 5.
The doubling is not a single-event spike. Underlying drivers include:
- Model side: New Sonnet / Opus releases topped coding & agent benchmarks; Cursor, Cline, Zed and other IDE clients default to Claude, feeding traffic back to claude.ai;
- Product side: Organic demos of Claude Projects, Artifacts and Computer Use went viral on X / Xiaohongshu;
- Ecosystem: the new Claude Skills Hub lowered the barrier for non-technical users — now aggregating 58k+ skills.
4. Gemini Closes the Gap: Two Months in a Row Ahead of ChatGPT
Gemini grew +22.9% MoM — the only member of the top-3 to post >20% growth two months in a row. The ChatGPT/Gemini ratio narrowed from 2.53× (Feb) to 2.21× (Mar). If this pace holds through Q2, Gemini crossing 50% of ChatGPT's volume is only a matter of time — and that would give Google its first real pricing leverage in enterprise AI deals.
5. Chinese AI: DeepSeek Rebounds, Dev-Platforms Enter the +100% Club
Three threads stand out on the China side:
1) DeepSeek recovered from its post-Spring-Festival dip
deepseek.com hit 350M visits in March, +28.4% MoM, back to global #5. The first clean calendar month after the V3.1 release — a combined read on model iteration and consumer re-engagement.
2) Doubao +62.5% — ByteDance consumer side keeps scaling
Doubao went to 158M (+62.5%), the second-fastest growth in the top-15 (after Claude). Combined with Moonshot/Kimi (moonshot.cn) +104.5%, ByteDance is closing a three-layer funnel: consumer chat → creator tools → dev platform.
3) MiniMax / Moonshot / Baidu Qingge joined the +100% club
MiniMax Platform +133.4%, Moonshot Platform +129.7%, Baidu Qingge +126.8%. All three are developer / enterprise gateways — and developer-side breakouts typically lead consumer adoption by 1–2 quarters. This is the clearest signal yet that the Chinese API ecosystem is entering early-explosion phase.
6. Fastest-growing Top 12 (filtered sample)
To avoid small-sample distortion, this list only includes products with ≥1M current-month visits and ≥100k prior-month visits.
| Product | Category | Visits | MoM |
|---|---|---|---|
 HiWaifu hiwaifu.com | Characters&Fun | 2.9M | +157.3% |
 Qoves Facial qoves.com | General AI | 1.3M | +155.6% |
 Nanobanana nanobanana.io | Image | 1.1M | +144.2% |
 MiniMax Platform platform.minimaxi.com | General AI | 4.7M | +133.4% |
 Moonshot Platform platform.moonshot.cn | General AI | 2.4M | +129.7% |
 Qingge (Baidu) qingge.baidu.com | Writing&Design | 1.2M | +126.8% |
 Luma AI lumalabs.ai | Video | 4.9M | +114.5% |
 Geminigen geminigen.ai | Video | 1.6M | +112.2% |
Claude claude.ai | General AI | 613.7M | +111.4% |
 Stitch stitch.withgoogle.com | Writing&Design | 12.9M | +104.6% |
 Kimi Chat moonshot.cn | General AI | 2.6M | +104.5% |
 Accio accio.com | Business | 5.2M | +104.2% |
7. Category View: General AI Commands Two-Thirds Share
Rolling up 19,832 products by top-level category, March's structure is very head-heavy: General AI alone takes 67.1% share — more than twice the sum of all other 11 categories combined. Notably, 11 of 12 categories are positive this month, a sharp reversal from February's broad ~25% pullback in Image / Video / Business.
| Category | Visits | Share | Sites | MoM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General AI | 10.44B | 67.1% | 4,364 | +15.7% |
| Writing & Design | 1.60B | 10.3% | 4,607 | +14.0% |
| Programming | 692.3M | 4.4% | 1,571 | +11.3% |
| Productivity | 647.7M | 4.2% | 1,813 | +15.1% |
| Image | 515.7M | 3.3% | 1,827 | +5.8% |
| Characters & Fun | 499.8M | 3.2% | 272 | +13.9% |
| Audio | 279.9M | 1.8% | 812 | +9.8% |
| Video | 258.0M | 1.7% | 547 | +8.8% |
| Education | 231.3M | 1.5% | 848 | +7.0% |
| AI Marketing | 216.6M | 1.4% | 1,397 | +7.3% |
| Business | 133.7M | 0.9% | 652 | +12.7% |
| Life Assistant | 51.0M | 0.3% | 1,122 | -1.4% |
General AI is not only the largest bucket, its +15.7% MoM also outpaced the headline. Combined with Claude doubling, Gemini +22.9% and Doubao +62.5%, the segment is shifting from "two-horse race" to a multi-polar structure.
8. Notable Decliners
Pixelcut collapsed from 10.5M to 1.9M in a single month (-81.5%) — the largest percentage drop among top-50 products. Worth monitoring whether this is a SEO algo change, app-side cannibalization or marketing-spend cut. Wenxiaobai (China) -45.6% as its Spring-Festival halo fades.
| Product | Category | Visits | MoM |
|---|---|---|---|
 Pixelcut pixelcut.ai | Image | 1.9M | -81.5% |
 Wenxiaobai wenxiaobai.com | General AI | 1.7M | -45.6% |
 Beart beart.ai | Image | 1.1M | -37.8% |
 Clipto clipto.com | Audio | 1.8M | -33.9% |
 Zhida (Zhihu) zhida.zhihu.com | General AI | 1.4M | -29.0% |
 Vidnoz vidnoz.com | Video | 2.7M | -25.1% |
 Hint hint.app | Life Assistant | 13.2M | -21.5% |
 AlphaCode 2 deepmind.google | Programming | 4.7M | -20.0% |
9. Three Takeaways
- Top-3 is reshuffling. ChatGPT share within the tracked sample fell from 39.3% to 36.8%; Claude doubled and Gemini posted double-digit growth two months running. The "only choice" narrative is breaking.
- Chinese API platforms are accelerating. Baidu Qingge, MiniMax platform, Moonshot platform — three developer gateways each +100%+, signaling ahead of the consumer curve.
- Broad-based rally returns; all categories accelerate together. 11 of 12 top-level categories grew; the 2024 hero buckets (Image / Video / Business) all returned to positive growth — the first such broad rally in six months.