AI Search Statistics (2026)

What are the key AI search statistics in 2026?

Ten AI search numbers, each read on its publisher's own page on 15 October 2026

Semrush and Ahrefs sell SEO software, so theirs are vendor studies; Google's and OpenAI's figures are their own, unaudited counts. The ChatGPT row is OpenAI's latest research-paper count; the company has since announced higher totals.

Sources Google Alphabet OpenAI Pew Semrush Ahrefs

How many people use AI search?

• AI Overviews have over 2.5 billion monthly active users, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at I/O on 19 May 2026. Google
• AI Mode passed 1 billion monthly active users within a year of launch, and its queries more than doubled every quarter, Google said in May 2026. Google
• The Gemini app has 950 million monthly active users, Alphabet said on 22 July 2026, with daily users tripling in a year. Alphabet
• ChatGPT had 700 million weekly users sending 18 billion messages a week in July 2025, per OpenAI's own usage paper. OpenAI
• 44% of US adults say they use ChatGPT, up from 34% a year earlier, and about 4 in 10 use chatbots to search, Pew found in February 2026. Pew

How often do AI Overviews appear in Google search?

• AI Overviews showed for 15.69% of queries in November 2025, after 6.49% in January and a 24.61% peak in July, in Semrush's vendor study. Semrush
• 18% of Google searches produced an AI summary in March 2025, in Pew's browsing data from 900 US adults. Pew
• 53% of Google searches of 10 words or more showed an AI summary, against 8% of one- or two-word searches, in Pew's March 2025 data. Pew
• 60% of Google searches that began with who, what, when or why produced an AI summary in Pew's March 2025 browsing data. Pew
• Semrush counts keywords in its database and Pew counts real searches by a panel, so the two shares measure different things.

Do AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites?

• Google users clicked a regular result on 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without one, in Pew's March 2025 data. Pew
• Links inside Google's AI summaries were clicked on 1% of visits to result pages that showed one, in Pew's March 2025 browsing data. Pew
• Google users ended their browsing session on 26% of result pages with an AI summary, against 16% without one, in Pew's March 2025 data. Pew
• An AI Overview goes with a 58% lower click rate for the top result, in Ahrefs' vendor study of 300,000 keywords, December 2025 data. Ahrefs
• Google says it sends billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search, per Alphabet's 22 July 2026 remarks. Alphabet
• Ahrefs' 58% is a correlation in desktop Search Console data, and Google gives no total behind its billions of clicks. Ahrefs

Do AI search engines cite the pages that rank on Google?

• 37.9% of URLs cited in AI Overviews were also in the first 10 blocks of Google's results, in Ahrefs' vendor study of 863K SERPs, 2 March 2026. Ahrefs
• Counting blue links only, Ahrefs found 37.1% of AI Overview citations in the top 10, 26.2% at 11 to 100 and 36.7% beyond (vendor study, March 2026). Ahrefs
• Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit made up 15% of sources in Google's AI summaries in Pew's March 2025 data, and 17% in regular results. Pew

What people use ChatGPT and AI Mode for

• Seeking Information grew from 14% to 24% of ChatGPT messages from July 2024 to July 2025, OpenAI's usage paper found. OpenAI
• Non-work messages rose from 53% to 73% of ChatGPT messages between June 2024 and June 2025, OpenAI's paper shows. OpenAI
• The average AI Mode search is triple the length of a regular Search query, Google said on 19 May 2026. Google
• More than one in six US searches now use voice or images, per Google's May 2026 report on AI Mode. Google

The share of quoted passages that carry a number

• About 37% of some 130 passages AI answers quoted on Google Maps lead tools carried a number with a unit, in a Leadity study, October 2026. Leadity study
• On cost questions about Google Maps lead tools, 31 of 37 quoted passages (84%) carried a number with a unit, in Leadity's October 2026 study. Leadity study
• 14 of 19 AI answers about Google Maps lead tools told readers to discount vendor-written sources, in Leadity's October 2026 study. Leadity study
• AI answers about Google Maps lead tools added a legal or terms caveat in 14 of 17 non-legal answers, in Leadity's October 2026 study. Leadity study

What pages cited by AI answers have in common

Share of cited pages with each feature, by page type: a Leadity study of 52 pages AI answers cited for 19 questions about Google Maps lead tools, read 14 October 2026

Cited pages ran a median 2,161 words and 20 H2 or H3 headings. The table shows what cited pages share, not what caused the citation.

Source Leadity

Does optimizing content for AI answers work?

• GEO methods raised visibility by up to 40% in generative engine responses, in lab tests by Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024. GEO paper
• Keyword stuffing did 10% worse than the baseline on Perplexity, in the GEO paper's lab tests (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024). GEO paper
• Citing sources lifted a fifth-ranked site's visibility by 115.1%, while the top-ranked site lost 30.3% on average, in the GEO paper's lab tests. GEO paper
• The GEO paper's results come from lab tests on 2023-era engines and a 10K-query benchmark: a direction, not a promise to a client.

What share of local business listings show no website?

35.9% of 2,782,509 Google Maps businesses showed no website in Leadity's Q3 2026 Google Maps data (1 July to 30 September 2026): a listing statistic, not a census. The full breakdown is in small business website statistics.

By trade the share runs from 15.9% for real estate agents to 42.9% for car detailing services, across the 32 trades in the same data.

For an agency selling AEO or GEO, a business with a site can buy an audit; one without needs a site first. The ranking by trade is in how to get AEO and GEO clients.

Source Leadity

How we measured

The cited pages study. On 14 October 2026 Leadity ran 19 questions about Google Maps lead tools as AI web searches and picked 47 content pages from the 178 results. With the 12 URLs ChatGPT cited in a logged-out baseline that made 59 pages: 53 could be measured, and 52 form the table above.

How pages were counted. A script read each saved page with JavaScript off and counted words, headings, tables, dates, schema and FAQ blocks. One person hand-coded about 130 quoted passages, so those shares are approximate.

Limits. The study covers one niche and shows what cited pages share, not what caused a citation. Domain strength and topic match decide most of retrieval first.

The Google Maps figures count the website field of the businesses Leadity customer scrapes of Google Maps found from 1 July to 30 September 2026, test accounts excluded, each business counted once, read 20 October 2026. They are a listing statistic, not a census: these are the trades and places customers chose to scrape, and businesses with no Google listing are absent. A listing that links only to a Facebook page counts as no website. Full dataset: Google Maps business data.

External figures were read on each publisher's own page on 15 October 2026 and keep their own dates.

Full method: the size, read date and limits of every Leadity dataset are on how we measure our data.

Source Leadity