AI search statistics 2026: 130+ numbers, every one sourced.

AI search is mainstream but still small next to Google. Google says AI Overviews reach over 2.5 billion people a month, ChatGPT has 1.2 billion weekly users, and 49% of US adults use AI chatbots. Yet AI assistants send under half a percent of website traffic, and fewer searches end in a click. Below are 130+ statistics, grouped by topic, each linked to the source we checked it against. Free to cite with a link.

Key statistics

<a href="https://www.seoarmy.co/ai-search-statistics">AI Search Statistics 2026</a> (SEOArmy, 2026)

How many people use AI search

Adoption numbers from surveys and from the companies themselves. Company counts are their own claims; surveys are samples of adults.

1. 49%of US adults use AI chatbots, up from 33% in 2024. Pew Research Center, Jun 2026 #
2. 42%of US adults say they use AI chatbots to search for information, the most common reason. Pew Research Center, Jun 2026 #
3. 44%of US adults use ChatGPT, up from 34% a year earlier and more than double the share in 2023. Pew Research Center, Jun 2026 #
4. 24%of US adults use Google's Gemini. Pew Research Center, Jun 2026 #
5. 17%of US adults use Microsoft Copilot. Pew Research Center, Jun 2026 #
6. 14%of US adults use Meta AI. Pew Research Center, Jun 2026 #
7. 57% vs 28%Adults under 50 are about twice as likely as those 50 and older to use ChatGPT. Pew Research Center, Jun 2026 #
8. 61%of American adults used AI in the past six months, and 19% use it every day (April 2025 survey of 5,031 adults with Morning Consult). Menlo Ventures, Jun 2025 #
9. 1.8 billionpeople worldwide use AI tools, about 600 million of them daily, Menlo Ventures estimates from its US survey. Menlo Ventures, Jun 2025 #
10. 3%of AI users pay for a premium AI service, by Menlo Ventures' estimate. Menlo Ventures, Jun 2025 #
11. 45%of baby boomers use AI, and 11% use it daily. Menlo Ventures, Jun 2025 #
12. 1 billion+monthly users use Meta AI, Mark Zuckerberg said on Meta's Q3 2025 earnings call. Meta, Oct 2025 #
13. 780 millionqueries were sent to Perplexity in May 2025, CEO Aravind Srinivas said. Original: Aravind Srinivas, Bloomberg Tech Summit, June 2025. TechCrunch, Jun 2025 #
14. 1 billion+users use the Gemini app, Google said in October 2026, calling it the fastest-growing product in its history. Google, Oct 2026 #
15. 65%of US adults use AI weekly, up from 52% three months earlier: about 175.5 million people (May 2026). Edison Research, May 2026 #
16. 175.5 millionAmerican adults use AI weekly, an increase of over 35.6 million in three months. Edison Research, May 2026 #
17. 60.8%of US working-age adults use generative AI as of August 2026, up from 44.6% in August 2024; weekly use grew from 36.1% to 53.8%. Harvard Kennedy School, Aug 2026 #
18. 52%of US adults use large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot (January 2025 survey). Elon University, Mar 2025 #
19. 72%of LLM users have used ChatGPT, 50% Google's Gemini and 39% Microsoft's Copilot. Elon University, Mar 2025 #
20. 34%of LLM users use one at least once a day, including 10% who use them "almost constantly". Elon University, Mar 2025 #
21. 53%of US consumers use or experiment with generative AI (3,524 consumers surveyed in Q2 2025). Deloitte, Sep 2025 #
22. 53%of Americans say they've used AI; 31% say they haven't used generative AI tools at all. YouGov, Oct 2025 #
23. 82%of avid AI users trust it at least somewhat, compared with 69% of all AI users; only 5% of users trust it completely. YouGov, Oct 2025 #
24. 10%of people across 48 markets use AI chatbots to get news each week, up from 7% a year earlier. Reuters Institute, Jun 2026 #

ChatGPT

The biggest AI assistant by users and by referral traffic. OpenAI reports weekly users; Google reports monthly users, so don't compare them directly.

1. 1.2 billionpeople use ChatGPT every week, up from 1 billion two months earlier, OpenAI's Adam Fry said in November 2026. Original: Adam Fry, OpenAI, interview, November 2026. Search Engine Roundtable, Nov 2026 #
2. 900 millionweekly active users and 50 million paying subscribers, OpenAI reported in February 2026. Original: OpenAI announcement, Feb 27, 2026. TechCrunch, Feb 2026 #
3. 800 millionweekly ChatGPT users in October 2025, the figure OpenAI gave before reaching 900 million. Original: OpenAI DevDay, October 2025. TechCrunch, Feb 2026 #
4. 700 millionusers were sending 18 billion messages a week by July 2025, about 10% of the world's adult population. OpenAI, Duke and Harvard, Sep 2025 #
5. 73%of consumer ChatGPT messages were not related to work in June 2025, up from 53% a year earlier. OpenAI, Duke and Harvard, Sep 2025 #
6. 24%of ChatGPT usage was "Seeking Information" by July 2025, up from 14% a year earlier, while Writing fell from 36% to 24%. OpenAI, Duke and Harvard, Sep 2025 #
7. 49%of ChatGPT messages were Asking (seeking information or advice), 40% Doing and 11% Expressing. OpenAI, Duke and Harvard, Sep 2025 #
8. 1/5ChatGPT's volume of search-like queries is roughly one-fifth of Google's, OpenAI said in November 2026. OpenAI has not published the data behind it. Original: Adam Fry, OpenAI, November 2026. Search Engine Roundtable, Nov 2026 #
9. 34.5%of ChatGPT prompts triggered a web search in February 2026, down from 46% in late 2024, with monthly swings between 15% and 66.3%. Semrush, Apr 2026 #
10. 65–85%of ChatGPT prompts did not match any keyword in Semrush's search database for most of October 2024 to February 2026. Semrush, Apr 2026 #
11. 206%year-over-year growth in ChatGPT referral traffic, January 2025 to January 2026. Semrush, Apr 2026 #
12. 21.6%of ChatGPT's outgoing referral traffic went to Google by early 2026. Semrush, Apr 2026 #
13. Jan 2026OpenAI announced a test of labeled ads for US users on ChatGPT's Free and Go plans, kept separate from answers. eWeek, Jan 2026 #

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google's AI answers reach more people than any chatbot because they sit on top of Google Search.

1. 2.5 billion+monthly active users see AI Overviews, and AI Mode has passed 1 billion, Google said at I/O in May 2026. Google, May 2026 #
2. 1 billion+monthly users use AI Mode, about a year after it launched in the US. Google, May 2026 #
3. 2 billion+monthly users used AI Overviews by July 2025, across more than 200 countries and territories and 40 languages; AI Mode had over 100 million in the US and India. Google, Jul 2025 #
4. May 14, 2024Google began rolling out AI Overviews to everyone in the US and expected to reach over a billion people by the end of 2024. Google, May 2024 #
5. May 20, 2025Google started rolling out AI Mode to all US users, without a Labs sign-up. Google, May 2025 #
6. 10%+increase in Google usage for the types of queries that show AI Overviews, in the US and India, Google said. Google, May 2025 #
7. 3xAI Mode queries are on average three times longer than traditional searches, and one in five use voice, images or documents, Google said in October 2026. Google, Oct 2026 #
8. 5-year highGoogle said its year-over-year query growth in Q3 2026 was the highest in five years. Google, Oct 2026 #
9. 60%of US adults say they read the AI summaries at the top of search results. Pew Research Center, Jun 2026 #
10. 18%of Google searches in Pew's March 2025 dataset of 68,879 searches produced an AI summary. Pew Research Center, Jul 2025 #
11. 53% vs 8%of searches of 10 or more words produced an AI summary, versus 8% of one- or two-word searches. Pew Research Center, Jul 2025 #
12. 15.69%of keywords in Semrush's dataset triggered an AI Overview in November 2025, after 6.49% in January and a peak of 24.61% in July. Semrush, Dec 2025 #
13. 57.1%of AI Overview triggers were informational queries by October 2025, down from 91.3% in January, as commercial and transactional triggers grew. Semrush, Dec 2025 #
14. 0.34%of US Google searches went to AI Mode from January to April 2026. SparkToro, Jun 2026 #
15. NoneGoogle says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. Google Search Central, Nov 2026 #

AI search vs. traditional search

AI is growing fast from a small base. Google still handles the large majority of searches.

1. 1.65%of US desktop events went to AI tools in Q1 2026, up from 1.31% a year earlier. Original: Datos State of Search Q1 2026. PPC Land, Apr 2026 #
2. 94.3%of US search share was Google's in March 2026. Original: Datos State of Search Q1 2026. PPC Land, Apr 2026 #
3. 91.05%of worldwide search engine market share was Google's in October 2026; Bing had 4.8%. Statcounter, Oct 2026 #
4. 1.13 billionreferral visits went from AI platforms to the top 1,000 websites in June 2025, up 357% year over year, against 191 billion from Google Search. Similarweb, Jul 2025 #
5. First dropGoogle searches in Apple's Safari fell for the first time ever in April 2025, Apple's Eddy Cue testified. Google said its overall searches, including from Apple devices, kept growing. Original: Eddy Cue testimony, US v. Google, May 7, 2025. 9to5Mac, May 2025 #
6. 80%of consumers rely on zero-click results in at least 40% of their searches, Bain found in a December 2024 survey of 1,117 people. Bain & Company, Feb 2025 #
7. 15–25%drop in organic web traffic is possible from zero-click and AI answers, Bain estimated. Bain & Company, Feb 2025 #

Clicks and zero-click searches

Fewer searches end in a click when an AI answer shows. Studies disagree on how much, because they measure different things.

1. 8% vs 15%of visits ended in a click on a regular result when Google showed an AI summary, versus 15% without one. Pew Research Center, Jul 2025 #
2. 1%of visits to pages with an AI summary ended in a click on a link inside the summary. Pew Research Center, Jul 2025 #
3. 26% vs 16%of searches with an AI summary ended the browsing session, versus 16% without one. Pew Research Center, Jul 2025 #
4. 58%lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page on keywords with AI Overviews (December 2025 vs. December 2023, 300,000 keywords). Ahrefs, Feb 2026 #
5. 34.5%lower position-one CTR on AI Overview keywords in Ahrefs' earlier April 2025 study. Ahrefs, Apr 2025 #
6. 1.76% → 0.61%organic CTR on informational queries with AI Overviews, June 2024 to September 2025, across 3,119 queries at 42 organizations. Seer Interactive, Nov 2025 #
7. 68%drop in paid CTR on informational queries with AI Overviews over the same period. Seer Interactive, Nov 2025 #
8. 68.01%of US Google searches ended without a click from January to April 2026 (Similarweb panel). SparkToro, Jun 2026 #
9. 60.45%is SparkToro's comparable 2024 figure; it calls the comparison "apples and oranges" because the data providers differ. SparkToro, Jun 2026 #
10. 58.5%of US and 59.7% of EU Google searches ended with zero clicks (Datos data, 2022 to May 2024). SparkToro, Jul 2024 #
11. 33.75% → 31.53%zero-click rate for the same keywords before and after AI Overviews appeared; Semrush says AI Overviews "don't automatically increase zero-click behavior". Semrush, Dec 2025 #
12. 92–94%of AI Mode sessions ended without a visit to an external website (about 69 million US desktop sessions). Semrush, Jul 2025 #
13. StableGoogle said total organic click volume from Search to websites was "relatively stable" year over year, with higher-quality clicks. Google, Aug 2025 #
14. 56% → 69%of news searches ended without a click to a news site, May 2024 to May 2025 (Similarweb data). Original: Similarweb. TechCrunch, Jul 2025 #
15. 2.3B → 1.7Borganic visits to news sites fell from over 2.3 billion at the mid-2024 peak to under 1.7 billion. Original: Similarweb. TechCrunch, Jul 2025 #

AI referral traffic

AI assistants still send a small share of website traffic, and ChatGPT sends most of it. Each study uses a different base, so read each number against its own.

1. 0.46%of website traffic came from AI assistants in October 2026, against 27.55% from search, across 118,671 sites. Ahrefs, Nov 2026 #
2. 0.36%of all traffic came from ChatGPT in October 2026; Meta AI 0.06%, Gemini 0.02%, Claude and Perplexity 0.01% each. Ahrefs, Nov 2026 #
3. 0.1%of total referral traffic came from AI in Ahrefs' March 2025 study of about 35,000 sites. Ahrefs, Mar 2025 #
4. 345xmore traffic came from Google than from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini combined (March 2025). Ahrefs, Mar 2025 #
5. 1.08%of website traffic came from AI referrals across 10 industries (1,215 enterprise domains, 3.3 billion sessions, May to September 2025). Conductor, Nov 2025 #
6. 87.4%of AI referral traffic came from ChatGPT in Conductor's data. Conductor, Nov 2025 #
7. 2.80%of traffic came from AI for information technology sites, the highest of Conductor's industries. Conductor, Nov 2025 #
8. 95.1%of AI referrals came from ChatGPT in August 2026; Gemini had 2.4%, Perplexity 1.1% and Claude 0.8%. BrightEdge, Sep 2026 #
9. 101%growth in ChatGPT referral traffic from January to August 2026. BrightEdge, Sep 2026 #
10. 11.6%of AI referrals came from Gemini at the end of Q1 2026, up from 4.3%, while ChatGPT's share fell from 89.2% to 81.4%. BrightEdge, May 2026 #
11. 2.25%of search referrals came from AI platforms in September 2026, with Google at 86.3%. BrightEdge, Oct 2026 #
12. 80%+of AI referrals to the top 1,000 websites came from ChatGPT (June 2025). Similarweb, Jul 2025 #
13. 1M → 25MChatGPT referrals to news sites, January to May 2024 vs. the same months of 2025. Original: Similarweb. TechCrunch, Jul 2025 #
14. May 13, 2026Google Analytics added a built-in AI Assistant channel that groups traffic from assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. Google Analytics Help, May 2026 #

AI traffic quality and shopping

AI visitors are fewer, but they often arrive later in their research and convert as well as or better than other traffic.

1. 693.4%increase in traffic from generative AI tools to US retail sites in the 2025 holiday season (November 1 to December 31). Adobe, Jan 2026 #
2. $257.8 billionspent online in the US in the 2025 holiday season, as more shoppers used AI tools. Adobe, Jan 2026 #
3. 1,300%growth in generative AI traffic to US retail sites in the 2024 holiday season. Adobe, Mar 2025 #
4. 9%less likely to convert than other visitors, Adobe found for generative AI traffic to US retail sites, a big improvement from July 2024. Adobe, Mar 2025 #
5. 8% / 12% / 23%longer visits, more pages viewed and a lower bounce rate for generative AI visitors to retail sites. Adobe, Mar 2025 #
6. 12.1%of Ahrefs' signups came from AI search, which sent 0.5% of its visits over 30 days. Ahrefs, Jun 2025 #
7. 23xhigher conversion rate for AI search visitors than for traditional organic visitors, on Ahrefs' own site. Ahrefs, Jun 2025 #

Citations and sources

Which sites AI answers cite, and how stable those choices are.

1. 16.3%of ChatGPT's citations went to Wikipedia, versus 12.5% for Perplexity and 8.4% for AI Overviews. Ahrefs, Jun 2025 #
2. 16.1%of Perplexity's citations and 9.5% of AI Overviews' went to YouTube, which was missing from ChatGPT's top 10. Ahrefs, Jun 2025 #
3. 7.4%of AI Overviews' citations went to Reddit and 3.6% to Quora; neither made the top 10 in ChatGPT or Perplexity. Ahrefs, Jun 2025 #
4. 60% → 10%of ChatGPT responses cited Reddit in early August 2025, before collapsing to around 10% by mid-September. Semrush, Nov 2025 #
5. 86%of AI citations came from sources brands manage or influence, across 6.8 million citations in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Yext, Oct 2025 #
6. 44%of AI citations pointed to first-party websites, 42% to listings and 8% to reviews and social. Yext, Oct 2025 #
7. 88%of Google's AI summaries cited three or more sources; only 1% cited one. Pew Research Center, Jul 2025 #
8. 67 wordswas the length of the median AI summary in Pew's data. Pew Research Center, Jul 2025 #
9. 0.70% vs 0.52%organic CTR for brands cited in an AI Overview versus uncited brands, Q3 2025; Seer says this may reflect brand strength. Seer Interactive, Nov 2025 #
10. <1 in 100chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI gave the same list of brands twice across 100 runs of the same prompt. SparkToro and Gumshoe, Jan 2026 #
11. 69 of 71ChatGPT answers named City of Hope for one prompt set, but it was named first in only 25. SparkToro and Gumshoe, Jan 2026 #

Local search and AI

How people find local businesses, and how fast AI is entering that journey. Most figures are from BrightLocal's 2026 consumer surveys.

1. 45%of consumers used ChatGPT or other AI tools for local business recommendations in the past year, up from 6% a year earlier. BrightLocal, Feb 2026 #
2. 84%of consumers searched online for a local business in the last three months. BrightLocal, Jul 2026 #
3. 73%started their latest local search on a phone. BrightLocal, Jul 2026 #
4. 52%started their latest local search on Google Search and 9% on Google Maps; 71% used Google Search at some point. BrightLocal, Jul 2026 #
5. 75%used more than one channel in their latest local search. BrightLocal, Jul 2026 #
6. 23%used AI tools in their latest local search. BrightLocal, Jul 2026 #
7. 18%of consumers who used AI for local searches felt ready to contact the business it recommended. BrightLocal, Jul 2026 #
8. 43%of those who started a search in an AI tool went on to check Google; 2% used AI as their only channel. BrightLocal, Jul 2026 #
9. 97%of consumers read reviews for local businesses; 41% always do, up from 29%. BrightLocal, Feb 2026 #
10. 68%will only use a business rated 4 stars or higher, up from 55% in 2025; 31% require 4.5 or more. BrightLocal, Feb 2026 #
11. 74%only care about reviews from the last three months. BrightLocal, Feb 2026 #
12. 47%will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews. BrightLocal, Feb 2026 #
13. 89%expect business owners to respond to reviews. BrightLocal, Feb 2026 #
14. 2 billion+people use Google Maps each month, and Gemini in Maps draws on data about 250 million places. Google, Oct 2024 #

Buyers and brands

How business buyers use AI, and how ready brands are.

1. 94%of business buyers use AI during their buying process (Forrester's Buyers' Journey Survey of nearly 18,000 buyers). Forrester, Oct 2025 #
2. 53%of the time, procurement professionals are decision-makers in the average business buying cycle. Forrester, Oct 2025 #
3. 60%+of business buyers buy some form of trial before committing, from pilots to paid sandboxes. Forrester, Oct 2025 #
4. 45%of US employees used AI at work at least a few times a year in Q3 2025, up from 40% in Q2; daily use rose from 8% to 10%. Gallup, Dec 2025 #
5. 23%of US employees use AI at work a few times a week or more, up from 19%. Gallup, Dec 2025 #
6. 75%of employed US adults and 85% of students use AI. Menlo Ventures, Jun 2025 #
7. 19%of US adults use AI to help write emails, the most common single use. Menlo Ventures, Jun 2025 #

AI crawlers

How much AI companies crawl the web compared with how much traffic they send back.

1. 1,091 : 1OpenAI crawled about 1,091 pages per visit it referred in July 2025; Anthropic about 38,066, Perplexity about 195 and Google about 5. Cloudflare, Aug 2025 #
2. 80%of AI crawling over the previous 12 months was for model training, 18% for search and 2% for user actions. Cloudflare, Aug 2025 #
3. 10.4%drop in OpenAI's crawl-to-referral ratio between January and July 2025. Cloudflare, Aug 2025 #
4. OAI-SearchBotSites that block OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers; GPTBot is the training crawler and is separate. OpenAI, Nov 2026 #
5. 24 hoursOpenAI says robots.txt changes for its search crawler take about 24 hours to take effect. OpenAI, Nov 2026 #

How to use these numbers

• Quote the source and date with the number. A 2025 click study and a 2026 user count describe different moments.
• Don't add up users across platforms. Google counts monthly users, OpenAI weekly, and the same person uses several tools.
• Read each traffic share against its own base: share of all traffic (Ahrefs, Conductor) is not share of search referrals (BrightEdge).
• For your own business, measure across many prompts. A free AEO Armory audit is one way to start.

Methodology and limits

We only list figures we could open at the original source or a reputable report of it, and every one is checked automatically against its source page each month. Where a number comes from a news report, we name the original. Company user counts (Google, OpenAI, Meta) are the companies' own claims and are not audited. Pew, Menlo Ventures, BrightLocal, Bain and Forrester are surveys. Ahrefs, Semrush, Similarweb, Datos, Conductor, BrightEdge and Adobe use their own panels or customer data, with different definitions and time windows, so their results are not directly comparable. Where a study reports a correlation (Ahrefs, Seer), it says so itself.

Every statistic links to its source and was opened and checked against it on 2026-11-11. We update this page every month.

Frequently asked questions

How many people use AI search in 2026?

Google says AI Overviews have over 2.5 billion monthly users and AI Mode over 1 billion (May 2026). ChatGPT had 1.2 billion weekly users in November 2026, per OpenAI. In the US, 49% of adults use AI chatbots (Pew, 2026).

How much website traffic comes from AI?

Very little so far: 0.46% of traffic across 118,671 sites in October 2026 (Ahrefs) and 1.08% across 10 industries in 2025 (Conductor). ChatGPT sends most of it.

Do AI Overviews reduce clicks?

Yes, on the queries where they appear. Pew found people clicked a regular result on 8% of visits with an AI summary versus 15% without, and Ahrefs measured about 58% lower CTR for the top result.

Can I use these statistics?

Yes. Cite the original source linked next to each number, and link to this page as where you found it. Each statistic has its own link: click the # next to it.

About the author

Sully Chaudhary

Founder & CEO, SEOArmy

Sully has built search-driven growth for businesses across more than 20 industries and was an early practitioner of AI search visibility, helping clients get cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity before most agencies were paying attention. Sully reviews the strategy behind every SEOArmy article. More about Sully →