Most AI search statistics pages repeat the same numbers without checking them. We did it the slow way: every figure below was read on its original page between October 5 and 6, 2026, copied without rounding, and linked so you can check it yourself. Where two credible studies disagree, both are listed with their method instead of picking the more dramatic one.
- ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people a week (OpenAI, Oct 2026); AI Overviews has 2.5 billion monthly users (Google, Jun 2026).
- With an AI summary on the page, Google users clicked a result in 8% of visits vs 15% without one (Pew).
- 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click in early 2026 (SparkToro/Similarweb).
- Only 38% of AI Overview citations also rank in the top 10, down from about 76% a year earlier (Ahrefs).
- AI-referred retail visitors convert 54% better than other traffic (Adobe, Jun 2026).
Jump to:
- AI assistant usage (9)
- Google AI Overviews and AI Mode (8)
- Click-through and traffic impact (9)
- Zero-click search (7)
- AI referral traffic to websites (9)
- What AI answers cite (9)
- Consumer and marketer adoption (9)
- How we compiled this
- Cite or embed
AI assistant usage
How many people use ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, Copilot and Perplexity, from the companies’ own statements where available.
ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people each week, according to OpenAI (October 2026); this supersedes OpenAI's 900 million weekly active users figure from February 2026.
Source: OpenAI – Building advertising for the way people use AI · 2026-10-05
ChatGPT has more than 50 million consumer subscribers (February 2026).
Source: OpenAI – Scaling AI for everyone · 2026-02-27
ChatGPT users send more than 2.5 billion prompts each day globally (OpenAI figure reported by Axios, July 2025; no newer official daily figure found).
Source: Axios (reporting OpenAI data) – Altman plans D.C. push to "democratize" AI economic benefits · 2025-07-21 secondary source
Google's Gemini app has surpassed 1 billion monthly users (August 2026), up from 950 million reported in July 2026.
Source: Google – Google's Gemini app hits 1 billion monthly active users · 2026-08-11
More than a billion monthly actives use Meta AI, according to Mark Zuckerberg (Q3 2025 earnings call; Meta has not given a newer figure).
Source: Meta Platforms – Meta Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript · 2025-10-29
Microsoft's first-party family of Copilots surpassed 150 million monthly active users (FY26 Q1, quarter ended September 2025).
Source: Microsoft – Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call · date not shown (FY26 Q1 call)
Bing monthly active users reached 1 billion for the first time (Microsoft FY26 Q3).
Source: Microsoft – Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call · date not shown (FY26 Q3 call)
Perplexity received 780 million queries in May 2025, per CEO Aravind Srinivas (no newer official figure found).
Source: TechCrunch (reporting Perplexity CEO statement) – Perplexity received 780 million queries last month, CEO says · 2025-06-05 secondary source
ChatGPT's share of worldwide generative AI website visits fell from about 76% in June 2025 to roughly 53% by May 2026, while Gemini rose from under 9% to around 27–28% and Claude from barely 2% to close to 9%.
Source: Similarweb – AI Search Stats in 2026 · 2026-07-29
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
Reach and coverage of Google’s AI answers in Search.
Google's AI Overviews has over 2.5 billion monthly active users (June 2026).
Source: Google – New opportunities, control and insights for website owners · 2026-06-03
Google's AI Mode has surpassed 1 billion monthly active users since expanding globally in October 2025 (Q2 2026 earnings).
Source: Google (Alphabet) – Alphabet earnings call Q2 2026: Sundar Pichai remarks · 2026-07-22
AI Mode queries have more than doubled every quarter since launch, according to Google (May 2026).
Source: Google – Google Search's I/O 2026 updates: AI agents and more · 2026-05-19
Google expanded Personal Intelligence in AI Mode to nearly 200 countries and territories across 98 languages (May 2026).
Source: Google – Google Search's I/O 2026 updates: AI agents and more · 2026-05-19
AI Overviews are available in more than 200 countries and territories and 40 languages (Google, July 2025; the user count in this quote is superseded by the 2.5 billion figure).
Source: Google (Alphabet) – Alphabet Q2 earnings call: CEO's remarks · 2025-07-23
Google says AI Overviews drive over 10% more queries globally for the types of queries that show them (July 2025).
Source: Google (Alphabet) – Alphabet Q2 earnings call: CEO's remarks · 2025-07-23
18% of Google searches in Pew's March 2025 browsing study generated an AI summary.
Source: Pew Research Center – Do people click on links in Google AI summaries? · 2025-07-22
AI Overview presence grew from roughly 30% to 48% of BrightEdge-tracked queries in a year (to February 2026), a 58% increase.
Source: BrightEdge – AI Overviews at the One-Year Mark: Presence, Size, and What They're Citing · date not shown
Click-through and traffic impact
What happens to clicks when an AI summary sits above the results. Studies measure this differently, so each figure is shown with its source and method.
Source: Pew Research Center, browsing data from March 2025, published July 2025
Google users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits, vs 15% of visits when no AI summary appeared (Pew, March 2025 data).
Source: Pew Research Center – Do people click on links in Google AI summaries? · 2025-07-22
Users clicked a link inside a Google AI summary in just 1% of visits to pages with a summary (Pew).
Source: Pew Research Center – Do people click on links in Google AI summaries? · 2025-07-22
Users ended their browsing session on 26% of Google results pages with an AI summary, vs 16% of pages with only traditional results (Pew).
Source: Pew Research Center – Do people click on links in Google AI summaries? · 2025-07-22
The presence of an AI Overview correlates with a 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page (Ahrefs, December 2025 data, 300,000 keywords), up from 34.5% in its April 2025 study.
Source: Ahrefs – Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58% · 2026-02-04
Organic CTR for queries with AI Overviews fell 61% (1.76% to 0.61%) between June 2024 and September 2025, and paid CTR on those queries fell 68% (Seer Interactive).
Source: Seer Interactive – AIO Impact on Google CTR: September 2025 Update · 2025-11-04
When an AI Overview appeared and the brand was not cited, organic CTR declined 67% over 2025 across 311 million impressions (Seer Interactive).
Source: Seer Interactive – AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update · 2026-04-24
Organic CTR on AI Overview queries partly rebounded in early 2026, from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026 (Seer Interactive).
Source: Seer Interactive – AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update · 2026-04-24
Being cited in an AI Overview delivers 120% more organic clicks per impression than not being cited, but still 38% fewer than queries with no AI Overview (Seer Interactive).
Source: Seer Interactive – AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update · 2026-04-24
Google says it is sending billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search (company claim, July 2026).
Source: Google (Alphabet) – Alphabet earnings call Q2 2026: Sundar Pichai remarks · 2026-07-22
Zero-click search
Searches that end without a click to any website. Clickstream panels and surveys give different numbers; both are listed.
Source: SparkToro analysis of Similarweb clickstream data, June 2026
68.01% of U.S. Google searches ended without a click in the first four months of 2026 (SparkToro analysis of Similarweb data).
Source: SparkToro (Similarweb clickstream data) – In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click · 2026-06-08
U.S. zero-click Google searches rose from 60.45% in 2024 to 68.01% in early 2026, a 7.5-percentage-point increase.
Source: SparkToro (Similarweb clickstream data) – In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click · 2026-06-08
For every 1,000 Google searches in the U.S., only 231 clicks go to the open web (SparkToro, 2026).
Source: SparkToro (Similarweb clickstream data) – Zero-Click Searches: Highest in the UK, Lowest in Germany, and France has the Most Efficient Searchers · 2026-06-17
Among six markets studied, the UK had the highest zero-click rate (69.5%) and Germany the lowest (62.1%) in 2026.
Source: SparkToro (Similarweb clickstream data) – Zero-Click Searches: Highest in the UK, Lowest in Germany, and France has the Most Efficient Searchers · 2026-06-17
46.96% of 10.2 billion Google searches (October 2024–December 2025) ended without a single click on an organic or paid result (iPullRank).
Source: iPullRank – What 13 Billion Google Searches Reveal About Zero-Click Behavior · 2026-07-30
About 80% of consumers rely on zero-click results in at least 40% of their searches (Bain survey, December 2024, n=1,117).
Source: Bain & Company – Goodbye Clicks, Hello AI: Zero-Click Search Redefines Marketing · 2025-02-19
About 60% of searches on traditional search engines end without the user progressing to another destination site (Bain).
Source: Bain & Company – Goodbye Clicks, Hello AI: Zero-Click Search Redefines Marketing · 2025-02-19
AI referral traffic to websites
How much traffic AI assistants send to websites, and how those visitors behave.
AI platforms drove an average of 770.7 million referral visits per month worldwide between June 2025 and May 2026, up 117.4% year over year (Similarweb).
Source: Similarweb – AI Referral Traffic by Industry: 2026 Data · 2026-09-03
AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites grew 138% year over year in May 2026, reaching its highest share of total retail visits since tracking began (Adobe).
Source: Adobe (Adobe Digital Insights) – Q3 AI Traffic Trends Report · June 2026
AI-referred retail visitors now convert at a 54% higher rate than non-AI traffic (Adobe, June 2026).
Source: Adobe (Adobe Digital Insights) – Q3 AI Traffic Trends Report · June 2026
AI-referred shoppers generate 53% more revenue per visit than non-AI traffic, versus 12 months earlier when non-AI visits were worth 128% more (Adobe).
Source: Adobe (Adobe Digital Insights) – Q3 AI Traffic Trends Report · June 2026
Traffic from AI sources to U.S. retail sites grew 393% year over year in Q1 2026 (Adobe).
Source: Adobe – AI traffic grows but retail sites lag in AI search visibility · 2026-04-16
Visitors arriving at U.S. retail sites from AI sources spend 48% longer on site and browse 13% more pages per visit than non-AI traffic (Adobe, March 2026).
Source: Adobe – AI traffic grows but retail sites lag in AI search visibility · 2026-04-16
ChatGPT's share of all website referral traffic worldwide rose from 0.23% in April 2026 to 0.32% in May 2026, an all-time high (SE Ranking, 101,574 websites).
Source: SE Ranking – Referral Traffic from ChatGPT Hit an All-Time High in May 2026 · 2026-07-09
ChatGPT's share of all AI referral traffic fell from 79.74% in 2025 to 75.96% in 2026 as other AI platforms grew (SE Ranking).
Source: SE Ranking – Referral Traffic from ChatGPT Hit an All-Time High in May 2026 · 2026-07-09
After ChatGPT's May 2026 brand-link update, homepage referrals rose from roughly 26–29% to about 62–63% of all ChatGPT referral traffic (Similarweb).
Source: Similarweb – AI Search Stats in 2026 · 2026-07-29
What AI answers cite
Which sources AI Overviews and ChatGPT pull from, and how much that overlaps with page-one rankings.
Source: Ahrefs (863K SERPs), March 2026 and BrightEdge
Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit are the most-cited sources in Google AI summaries, together accounting for 15% of sources listed (Pew).
Source: Pew Research Center – Do people click on links in Google AI summaries? · 2025-07-22
Only 37.9% of URLs cited in AI Overviews also appeared in the top 10 results for the same query, down from 76% in Ahrefs' 2025 study (Ahrefs, March 2026).
Source: Ahrefs – Update: 38% of AI Overview Citations Pull From The Top 10 · 2026-03-02
Among AI Overview citations that don't rank in Google's top 100, 18.2% are YouTube URLs, which account for 5.6% of all AI Overview citations (Ahrefs).
Source: Ahrefs – Update: 38% of AI Overview Citations Pull From The Top 10 · 2026-03-02
Only about 17% of sources cited in AI Overviews also rank in the organic top 10 (BrightEdge).
Source: BrightEdge – AI Overviews at the One-Year Mark: Presence, Size, and What They're Citing · date not shown
Overlap between AI Overview citations and the organic top 10 ranges from 24% in Healthcare to just 11% in Finance (BrightEdge).
Source: BrightEdge – AI Overviews at the One-Year Mark: Presence, Size, and What They're Citing · date not shown
ChatGPT cited Reddit in close to 60% of prompt responses in early August 2025 before falling to around 10% by mid-September 2025 (Semrush, 230K prompts).
Source: Semrush – The Most-Cited Domains in AI: A 3-Month Study · 2025-11-10
Wikipedia's appearance in ChatGPT responses dropped from roughly 55% to less than 20% over the same period (Semrush).
Source: Semrush – The Most-Cited Domains in AI: A 3-Month Study · 2025-11-10
The presence of citations in U.S. ChatGPT prompts rose from about 1.6% in June 2025 to roughly 6.8% by May 2026 (Similarweb).
Source: Similarweb – AI Search Stats in 2026 · 2026-07-29
A brand's own sites often make up only 5–10% of the sources AI-powered search references (McKinsey).
Source: McKinsey & Company – New front door to the internet: Winning in the age of AI search · 2025-10-16
Consumer and marketer adoption
Survey data on how people and brands are adapting.
About half of U.S. adults (49%) now use AI chatbots, up from 33% in 2024 (Pew, February 2026 survey of 5,119 adults).
Source: Pew Research Center – Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact · 2026-06-17
44% of U.S. adults report using ChatGPT, up from 34% in 2025 (Pew).
Source: Pew Research Center – Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact · 2026-06-17
42% of U.S. adults say they use AI chatbots to search for information, the most common use (Pew).
Source: Pew Research Center – Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact · 2026-06-17
60% of U.S. adults say they read AI summaries at the top of search engine results (Pew).
Source: Pew Research Center – Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact · 2026-06-17
50% of U.S. consumers already use AI-powered search (McKinsey AI Discovery Survey, August 2025, n=1,927).
Source: McKinsey & Company – New front door to the internet: Winning in the age of AI search · 2025-10-16
44% of AI-powered search users say it is their primary and preferred source of insight, ahead of traditional search at 31% (McKinsey).
Source: McKinsey & Company – New front door to the internet: Winning in the age of AI search · 2025-10-16
39% of consumers have used AI assistants for online shopping, and 85% of them say it improved their experience (Adobe survey, March 2026).
Source: Adobe (Adobe Digital Insights) – Q3 AI Traffic Trends Report · June 2026
94% of enterprise CMOs and digital leaders plan to increase AEO investment in 2026, after allocating an average of 12% of digital budgets to AEO in 2025 (Conductor).
Source: Conductor – The 2026 State of AEO / GEO: CMO Investment Report · 2026-01-13
Only 16% of brands systematically track AI search performance (McKinsey survey of Fortune 500 consumer-brand CMOs, September 2025, n≈30).
Source: McKinsey & Company – New front door to the internet: Winning in the age of AI search · 2025-10-16
What the numbers mean for your site
Three things hold across almost every dataset here. First, AI answers are now a default part of search, not an experiment: billions of people see them every month. Second, a page can rank well and still lose clicks, because the summary answers the question first; the Pew and Seer data both show that. Third, being cited is now its own goal, separate from ranking, since a large share of cited pages don’t sit in the top 10 at all.
In practice: track AI referrals as their own channel in analytics, check which of your key queries trigger AI Overviews, and make your pages easy to quote with clear, specific answers. Our guides on optimizing for AI Overviews and recovering lost AI Overview traffic go into the how.
How we compiled this
- Every statistic was checked on its source page on October 5–6, 2026. Numbers are copied as published, not rounded.
- Primary sources (the company or research group that produced the number) were used wherever possible. Figures taken from a news report are marked “secondary source”.
- Where a newer figure replaced an older one for the same metric, only the newest is listed, with its date.
- Company claims (for example, Google’s statements about clicks sent to websites) are labelled as the company’s own figures.
- Known gaps: Anthropic does not publish Claude user numbers, and the newest official Perplexity figure we could verify is from May 2025.
- Spotted an error or a newer figure? Email partner@growwithba.com and we’ll update the page.
Cite or embed
You’re welcome to use any statistic here. Please cite the original source linked next to it, and if this page saved you time, a link back helps us keep it updated.