AI Search Statistics 2026: AI Mode, AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Zero-Click Data

We first published this page in January 2025, when Google's AI answers were still rolling out and most "AI search statistics" were forecasts. By late 2026 the research has caught up. Below is the data we could trace to a primary or reputable source, grouped by what it tells you. Where an older figure is still the best available, it is labeled with its year.

AI Search Adoption Statistics

How many people now search through AI assistants, by platform.

• Google AI Mode has passed 1 billion monthly active users since it expanded globally in October 2025, and Google says it is driving an incremental increase in Search queries overall (Google Q2 2026 earnings remarks, July 22, 2026).
• AI Mode is available in more than 200 countries and territories, after an October 2025 expansion that added more than 35 languages (Google, October 2025).
• The Gemini app has 950 million monthly active users, with daily active users tripling in a year (Google Q2 2026 earnings remarks).
• ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly active users and 50 million paying subscribers, OpenAI announced on February 27, 2026 (TechCrunch).
• 45% of US consumers used ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for local business recommendations in 2026, up from 6% in 2025, making AI the third most popular recommendation source after Facebook and Google (BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 1,002 US adults).

Zero-Click Search Statistics

How often a search ends without a visit to any website.

• 68.01% of US Google searches ended without any click from January to April 2026, up from 60.45% in 2024 on the same Similarweb clickstream panel (SparkToro/Similarweb, June 2026).
• In 2024, SparkToro and Datos measured 58.5% of US Google searches as zero-click, with 360 of every 1,000 US searches sending a click to the open web (SparkToro/Datos, July 2024). The two studies use different panels, so compare each with its own baseline.
• 92% to 94% of Google AI Mode searches were zero-click, with only 6% to 8% of sessions leading to a visit to an external domain, in an analysis of almost 69 million US desktop sessions from May to July 2025 (Semrush, July 2025).

Google AI Overviews Statistics

How often AI Overviews appear and what they do to clicks on the results below them.

• In March 2025, 18% of Google searches produced an AI summary in Pew Research Center's browsing panel of 900 US adults (Pew, July 2025).
• Users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits with an AI summary, versus 15% without one, and clicked a link inside the summary on just 1% of visits (Pew, 2025).
• An AI Overview correlated with a 58% lower average CTR for the top-ranking page in December 2025 across 300,000 keywords, up from a 34.5% click reduction Ahrefs measured in early 2025 (Ahrefs, December 2025 update; original study, April 2025). The two figures use slightly different measures.
• AI Overviews triggered on 6.49% of queries in January 2025, peaked at 24.61% in July and settled at 15.69% in November 2025 across a 10-million-keyword set (Semrush, December 2025).
• Organic CTR fell year over year between April 2024 and April 2025, with position 3 seeing the steepest drop and position 1 the smallest, across about 750 million impressions; AI Overviews appeared on about 20% of US and UK queries (seoClarity, July 2025).

The Citation Advantage

What changes for a brand when the AI answer cites it.

• Brands cited inside an AI Overview earned 35% higher organic CTR and 91% higher paid CTR than uncited brands in Q3 2025 (Seer Interactive, September 2025). Seer notes it cannot prove the citation causes the lift, since stronger brands may simply be cited more often.
• On queries with AI Overviews, organic CTR fell 61% and paid CTR fell 68% between June 2024 and September 2025, across 3,119 queries and more than 26 million impressions (Seer Interactive). Paid search is not a refuge from AI answers.
• The takeaway: being the cited source is the new position #1. That discipline is generative engine optimization, and the tooling to measure it now spans a full market; see our ranking of GEO software.

Consumer Behavior Statistics

How people actually use AI answers, and where that traffic goes.

• In February 2025, Bain found about 80% of search users rely on AI summaries at least 40% of the time, that about 60% of searches end without a click to another site, and estimated a 15% to 25% reduction in organic web traffic (Bain & Company).
• Traffic from AI sources to US retail sites rose 269% year over year as of March 2026, per Adobe data cited when Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush (Adobe, April 2026).

Market Validation: Where the Money Went

The software market has reorganized around AI visibility. HubSpot agreed to acquire AEO platform XFunnel (October 2025). Adobe agreed to buy Semrush in an all-cash deal valued at about $1.9 billion (November 2025) and completed it on April 28, 2026. Sitecore bought GEO startup Scrunch for a price Bloomberg reported at about $225 million, which Sitecore declined to confirm (Adweek, June 2026). AI-visibility platform Profound raised a $96 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation (February 2026), then a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation less than seven months later (September 2026).

Budget Statistics

Where marketing money sits today, and how exposed it is to AI answers.

• Digital channels accounted for 61.1% of total marketing spend in Gartner's 2025 CMO Spend Survey of 402 marketing leaders, and paid search rose from 13.6% to 13.9% of digital spend, the largest digital channel (Gartner, June 2025).
• Since paid CTR on AI Overview queries fell 68% in Seer's data, budget sitting in paid search is exposed to the same AI-answer shift as organic.

What These Statistics Mean for Your Business

The Opportunity

Cited brands see higher click-through rates than uncited ones, and AI assistants are now a top-three source of local recommendations. Most businesses still do not track whether ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode or Perplexity mention them, so systematic work here still stands out.

The Risk

Zero-click share keeps rising, and the top organic result loses more than half its click-through rate when an AI Overview appears. A traffic plan built only on ranking positions now loses visits on rankings it still holds.

How to Use This Data

Measure what you can: impressions and clicks in Search Console (Google reports AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic inside the "Web" search type), referral sessions from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com, and a monthly check of whether assistants name your business for your top customer questions.

Sources & Methodology

Every statistic above links to its source, and each source was re-checked on October 10, 2026. Figures we could not trace were removed, including an SEO share of marketing budgets and a paid-click rate per 1,000 searches that earlier versions of this page carried. Study panels and definitions differ, so compare each figure with its own baseline rather than across studies.

• Google: Q2 2026 earnings call, remarks from Sundar Pichai (July 22, 2026)
• Google: AI Mode expands to more languages and locations (October 7, 2025)
• TechCrunch: ChatGPT reaches 900M weekly active users (February 27, 2026)
• SparkToro: In 2026, less than one-third of Google searches still send a click (June 2026)
• SparkToro and Datos: 2024 zero-click search study (July 2024)
• Semrush: Google AI Mode SEO impact study (July 30, 2025)
• Pew Research Center: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears (July 22, 2025)
• Ahrefs: AI Overviews reduce clicks, December 2025 update
• Ahrefs: AI Overviews reduce clicks, original study (April 2025)
• Semrush: AI Overviews study (December 15, 2025)
• seoClarity: mobile and desktop CTR study (July 2025)
• Seer Interactive: AIO impact on Google CTR, September 2025 update
• Bain & Company: consumer reliance on AI search results (February 19, 2025)
• BrightLocal: Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (February 11, 2026)
• Adobe: Adobe completes Semrush acquisition (April 28, 2026)
• Semrush: Adobe to acquire Semrush (November 19, 2025)
• HubSpot: HubSpot to acquire XFunnel (October 31, 2025)
• Adweek: Sitecore snaps up GEO startup Scrunch (June 2026)
• Profound: Series C at a $1B valuation (February 24, 2026)
• Profound: $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation (September 15, 2026)
• Gartner: 2025 CMO Spend Survey, digital channels account for 61.1% of marketing spend (June 2, 2025)