AI Search 2026 Statistics (Updated September)

How many people use AI search

1. 1

   5 of the 10 Google results for "ai search statistics" are published by companies that sell AI search visibility software or services, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026.

   Source: CrossMention · Google US, 2026-09-24 · 10 organic results · method

2. 2

   ChatGPT users sent 18 billion messages a week by July 2025, from 700 million weekly users, according to a 2025 NBER working paper by OpenAI researchers and economists.

   Source: NBER Working Paper, 2025 ^[1]

3. 3

   ChatGPT's 700 million weekly users in July 2025 were nearly 10% of the world's adult population, in a 2025 NBER working paper on ChatGPT usage.

   Source: NBER Working Paper, 2025 ^[1]

4. 4

   73% of consumer ChatGPT messages were not related to work in June 2025, up from 53% in June 2024, in a 2025 NBER working paper on ChatGPT usage.

   Source: NBER Working Paper, 2025 ^[1]

5. 5

   Seeking Information, the ChatGPT use that works as a substitute for web search, grew from 14% to 24% of all messages between July 2024 and July 2025, in a 2025 NBER working paper on ChatGPT usage.

   Source: NBER Working Paper, 2025 ^[1]

6. 6

   Writing is the most common work use of ChatGPT, at 40% of work-related messages in June 2025, in a 2025 NBER working paper on ChatGPT usage.

   Source: NBER Working Paper, 2025 ^[1]

7. 7

   44% of U.S. adults say they use ChatGPT, up from 34% a year earlier, in Pew Research Center's February 2026 survey.

   Source: Pew Research Center, 2026 ^[2]

8. 8

   13% of U.S. adults use AI chatbots to get news, in a Pew Research Center survey of 5,119 adults in February 2026.

   Source: Pew Research Center, 2026 ^[2]

9. 9

   60% of U.S. adults say they read the AI summaries at the top of search engine results and 30% say they do not, in a Pew Research Center survey of 5,119 adults in February 2026.

   Source: Pew Research Center, 2026 ^[2]

10. 10

    Monthly web visits to generative AI platforms worldwide averaged 9.5 billion between June 2025 and May 2026, up 70% year over year, according to Similarweb.

    Source: Similarweb, 2026 ^[3]

11. 11

    Unique visitors to generative AI platforms grew 57% to 655 million between June 2025 and May 2026, according to Similarweb.

    Source: Similarweb, 2026 ^[3]

12. 12

    ChatGPT's share of worldwide generative AI web traffic fell from about 76% to about 53% in a year, according to Similarweb's 2026 data.

    Source: Similarweb, 2026 ^[3]

13. 13

    Claude's worldwide app monthly active users grew about 1,318% between June 2025 and May 2026, according to Similarweb.

    Source: Similarweb, 2026 ^[3]

14. 14

    Google's share of US search in 2025 was closer to 70% than 90% once searches on other sites are counted, in SparkToro's analysis of 41 websites with search activity.

    Source: SparkToro, 2026 ^[4]

15. 15

    23 of the 41 websites SparkToro analyzed, including ChatGPT, had more than 0.1% of US search activity in 2025.

    Source: SparkToro, 2026 ^[4]

How often AI Overviews appear and what they do to clicks

1. 16

   Google shows an AI Overview on 36% of informational queries, 8% of commercial queries and 5% of transactional queries, in Seer Interactive's tracking of 53 brands.

   Source: Seer Interactive, 2026 ^[5]

2. 17

   Comparison queries triggered an AI Overview 95.4% of the time, and question-format queries 85.9% of the time, across 30,842 informational queries Seer tracked.

   Source: Seer Interactive, 2026 ^[5]

3. 18

   Informational queries containing "near me" showed an AI Overview 76.9% of the time in Seer Interactive's 2026 study of 53 brands.

   Source: Seer Interactive, 2026 ^[5]

4. 19

   Around 43% or more of US Google searches show an AI Overview, according to Similarweb's 2026 data.

   Source: Similarweb, 2026 ^[3]

5. 20

   When an AI Overview appears, the top-ranking page gets a 58% lower click-through rate, in Ahrefs' study of 300,000 keywords with December 2025 data.

   Source: Ahrefs, 2026 ^[6]

6. 21

   In April 2025, Ahrefs measured a 34.5% drop in clicks to top-ranking pages when an AI Overview appeared.

   Source: Ahrefs, 2026 ^[6]

7. 22

   Average position-one CTR for informational keywords fell from 0.076 in December 2023 to 0.039 in December 2025, in Ahrefs' 2026 study of 300,000 keywords.

   Source: Ahrefs, 2026 ^[6]

8. 23

   A brand cited inside an AI Overview gets 120% more organic clicks per impression than one that is not cited, in Seer Interactive's 2025 data.

   Source: Seer Interactive, 2026 ^[5]

9. 24

   Organic CTR for brands not cited in an AI Overview fell 67% over 2025, across 311 million impressions in Seer Interactive's 2026 study.

   Source: Seer Interactive, 2026 ^[5]

10. 25

    Organic CTR on queries with an AI Overview recovered to 2.4% in early 2026, up 85% from a low of 1.3% in December 2025, in Seer Interactive's 2026 study.

    Source: Seer Interactive, 2026 ^[5]

Which pages AI answers cite

1. 26

   3 of the 46 pages OpenAI's GPT-5.5 cited with web search, across 20 software-buying queries, were also in Google's top 10 for the same query, in a CrossMention test on September 24, 2026.

   Source: CrossMention · OpenAI Responses API and Google US, 2026-09-24 · 46 distinct cited URLs across 20 answers · method

2. 27

   17 of 20 GPT-5.5 answers to software-buying queries cited no page from Google's top 10 for the same query, in a CrossMention test on September 24, 2026.

   Source: CrossMention · OpenAI Responses API and Google US, 2026-09-24 · 20 answers · method

3. 28

   9 of 46 pages cited by GPT-5.5 for 20 software-buying queries came from a website that also had a page in Google's top 10 for the query, in a CrossMention test on September 24, 2026.

   Source: CrossMention · OpenAI Responses API and Google US, 2026-09-24 · 46 distinct cited URLs · method

4. 29

   37.9% of URLs cited in Google AI Overviews also rank in the top 10 for the same keyword, down from about 76% in July 2025, according to Ahrefs.

   Source: Ahrefs, 2026 ^[7]

5. 30

   31.0% of AI Overview citations come from pages ranking beyond the top 100 for the same keyword, in Ahrefs' 2026 study.

   Source: Ahrefs, 2026 ^[7]

6. 31

   18.2% of the AI Overview citations that did not rank in Google's top 100 were YouTube URLs, in Ahrefs' 2026 study.

   Source: Ahrefs, 2026 ^[7]

7. 32

   55.2% of the pages AI platforms cited in their top 10 did not rank in Google's top 10 for the same query, in Rankability's 2026 study.

   Source: Rankability, 2026 ^[8]

8. 33

   Only 29.1% of the exact pages appeared in both AI citations and traditional search results for the same query, in Rankability's 2026 study of 31 queries.

   Source: Rankability, 2026 ^[8]

9. 34

   No two AI platforms shared more than 24.1% of the pages they cited, in Rankability's 2026 study.

   Source: Rankability, 2026 ^[8]

10. 35

    72.8% of AI-cited pages had zero page-level referring domains in Rankability's 2026 study of 31 queries.

    Source: Rankability, 2026 ^[8]

11. 36

    Listicles and comparison pages earned 63.6% of AI citations in Rankability's 2026 study, though 24 of its 31 queries asked for "best" or "top" results.

    Source: Rankability, 2026 ^[8]

12. 37

    80.5% of AI-cited pages with a reliable date were less than six months old in Rankability's 2026 study of 31 queries.

    Source: Rankability, 2026 ^[8]

13. 38

    Sources without a measured organic ranking made up 77.0% of ChatGPT citations and 12.2% of Perplexity citations in Rankability's 2026 study of 31 queries.

    Source: Rankability, 2026 ^[8]

14. 39

    The share of US ChatGPT prompts whose answers carry citations rose from about 1.6% in June 2025 to about 6.8% in May 2026, according to Similarweb.

    Source: Similarweb, 2026 ^[3]

15. 40

    About 26% of ChatGPT responses contain an ad, in Similarweb's 2026 Generative AI Landscape report.

    Source: Similarweb, 2026 ^[3]

16. 41

    A 2025 arXiv study by Zhang et al. of 55,936 queries across six AI search engines and two traditional search engines found that 37% of the domains the AI engines cited did not appear in the two traditional engines' results.

    Source: arXiv (Zhang et al.), 2025 ^[9]

17. 42

    Only 51.5% of sentences written by four generative search engines were fully supported by their citations, and 74.5% of citations supported the sentence they were attached to, in a Stanford audit.

    Source: Findings of EMNLP, 2023 ^[10]

18. 43

    Eight AI search tools gave incorrect answers to more than 60% of queries asking them to identify the source of a news excerpt, in a 2025 Tow Center test.

    Source: Columbia Journalism Review, 2025 ^[11]

19. 44

    Grok 3 answered 94% of the Tow Center's queries incorrectly; Perplexity answered 37% incorrectly.

    Source: Columbia Journalism Review, 2025 ^[11]

20. 45

    Rewriting web pages with generative engine optimization methods raised their visibility in generative engine answers by up to 40% on GEO-bench, a benchmark of 10,000 queries, in a paper presented at KDD 2024.

    Source: KDD 2024 (ACM), 2024 ^[12]

How much traffic AI search sends

1. 46

   Generative AI tools drove a 693.4% increase in traffic to US retail sites in the 2025 holiday season, according to Adobe Analytics.

   Source: Adobe, 2026 ^[13]

2. 47

   On Cyber Monday 2025, AI traffic to US retail sites rose 670% year over year, according to Adobe Analytics.

   Source: Adobe, 2026 ^[13]

Frequently asked questions

How many people use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT had 700 million weekly users sending 18 billion messages a week by July 2025, according to an NBER working paper by OpenAI researchers and economists. In the US, 44% of adults told Pew Research Center in February 2026 that they use ChatGPT, up from 34% a year earlier.

How often does Google show an AI Overview?

Seer Interactive's 2026 data shows AI Overviews on 36% of informational queries, 8% of commercial queries and 5% of transactional queries. Comparison queries trigger one 95.4% of the time. Similarweb puts the overall US rate at 43% or more of searches.

Do AI Overviews reduce clicks?

Yes. Ahrefs found a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page when an AI Overview appears, using December 2025 data for 300,000 keywords, up from a 34.5% drop in its April 2025 run. Seer found that brands cited inside the AI Overview get 120% more organic clicks per impression than brands that are not cited.

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

Mostly not. Ahrefs found that 37.9% of AI Overview citations rank in Google's top 10 for the same keyword. Rankability found that 55.2% of top AI citations did not rank in the top 10. In our own test of 20 software queries, 3 of the 46 pages GPT-5.5 cited were in Google's top 10.

How accurate are AI search citations?

A Stanford audit published at Findings of EMNLP 2023 found that only 51.5% of sentences from four generative search engines were fully supported by their citations. In a 2025 Tow Center test, eight AI search tools gave incorrect answers to more than 60% of queries asking them to identify the source of a news excerpt.

How much traffic does AI search send to websites?

Adobe Analytics recorded a 693.4% increase in traffic from generative AI tools to US retail sites in the 2025 holiday season, and a 670% increase on Cyber Monday.

Sources

1. [1]NBER Working Paper. 2025.↑2 ↑3 ↑4 ↑5 ↑6
2. [2]Pew Research Center. 2026.↑7 ↑8 ↑9
3. [3]Similarweb. 2026.↑10 ↑11 ↑12 ↑13 ↑19 ↑39 ↑40
4. [4]SparkToro. 2026.↑14 ↑15
5. [5]Seer Interactive. 2026.↑16 ↑17 ↑18 ↑23 ↑24 ↑25
6. [6]Ahrefs. “AI Overviews reduce clicks by 58%”. 2026.↑20 ↑21 ↑22
7. [7]Ahrefs. “38% of AI Overview citations pull from the top 10”. 2026.↑29 ↑30 ↑31
8. [8]Rankability. 2026.↑32 ↑33 ↑34 ↑35 ↑36 ↑37 ↑38
9. [9]arXiv (Zhang et al.). 2025.↑41
10. [10]Findings of EMNLP. 2023.↑42
11. [11]Columbia Journalism Review. 2025.↑43 ↑44
12. [12]KDD 2024 (ACM). 2024.↑45
13. [13]Adobe. 2026.↑46 ↑47

Method

We searched Google for ai search statistics, chatgpt search statistics and generative engine optimization statistics, read the pages that ranked on the first page, and counted how many of them repeat each number. Each outside number was traced to the study, survey or company that produced it and checked against that page on September 24, 2026. Four sources are papers: an NBER working paper on ChatGPT usage, a KDD 2024 paper on generative engine optimization, a Findings of EMNLP 2023 audit of citations in generative search engines, and a 2025 arXiv preprint on the sources AI search engines cite. Much of the click and citation data comes from companies that sell SEO or AI visibility tools (Ahrefs, Seer Interactive, Rankability, Similarweb), measured on their own client or panel data. Our own numbers come from 20 software-buying queries we sent to OpenAI's GPT-5.5 with web search through the API on September 24, 2026, compared with Google's top 10 for the same queries. The API model is not the same as the ChatGPT app, and 20 queries is a small sample, so read those numbers as a spot check.

CrossMention numbers new on this page:

• 3 of the 46 pages OpenAI's GPT-5.5 cited with web search, across 20 software-buying queries, were also in Google's top 10 for the same query, in a CrossMention test on September 24, 2026. 20 queries of the form "best <software category>" (CRM, payroll, help desk, VPN and 16 more) sent to gpt-5.5 with the web_search tool (US location) through OpenAI's API, which is not identical to the ChatGPT app. Cited URLs from the answer annotations, compared with Google's top 10 organic results for the same query via Serper. URLs matched after removing query strings. Script: research/drafts/ai-search-statistics/ai_answer_sample.py and counts.py.
• 17 of 20 GPT-5.5 answers to software-buying queries cited no page from Google's top 10 for the same query, in a CrossMention test on September 24, 2026. Same sample. An answer counts when at least one cited URL matches a Google top-10 URL for that query.
• 9 of 46 pages cited by GPT-5.5 for 20 software-buying queries came from a website that also had a page in Google's top 10 for the query, in a CrossMention test on September 24, 2026. Same sample, matched by host name (www. removed) instead of full URL.
• 5 of the 10 Google results for "ai search statistics" are published by companies that sell AI search visibility software or services, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026. Top 10 organic results via Serper (US). A publisher counts as a seller when its homepage sells AI visibility tracking, AI SEO software or generative engine optimization services. Sellers: Semrush, Rankability, Omnibound, Goodie, Passionfruit. Not counted: Statista, Forbes, Wix, Elementor, Google Trends. Script: serp_sellers.py.

All 47 statistics as a CSV: ai-search-statistics.csv.

Cite this page

CrossMention, “AI Search 2026 Statistics (Updated September)”, updated September 2026, https://crossmention.com/research/ai-search-statistics

To cite one number, link its anchor: each statistic has one, for example https://crossmention.com/research/ai-search-statistics#stat-1.