How many people use AI assistants and AI search?
900 million
People using ChatGPT every week.
Source: OpenAI announcement, reported by TechCrunch, 27 February 2026 · Global · Weekly active users[1]
2.5 billion+
Monthly users of Google's AI Overviews.
Source: Google I/O keynote, reported by CNBC, 19 May 2026 · Global · Monthly users[2]
What happens to clicks when AI answers appear?
8% vs 15%
Visits where people clicked a traditional search result, with an AI summary on the page versus without one.
Source: Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025 · United States · 900 adults, 68,879 Google searches, March 2025[3]
1%
Visits where people clicked a link inside the AI summary itself.
Source: Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025 · United States · 900 adults, 68,879 Google searches, March 2025[3]
26% vs 16%
Pages after which people ended their browsing session, with an AI summary versus without one.
Source: Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025 · United States · 900 adults, 68,879 Google searches, March 2025[3]
1 in 5
Google searches in March 2025 that produced an AI summary.
Source: Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025 · United States · 900 adults, 68,879 Google searches, March 2025[3]
60%
Searches phrased as questions (starting with who, what, when or why) that produced an AI summary, compared with 8% of one- or two-word searches.
Source: Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025 · United States · 900 adults, 68,879 Google searches, March 2025[3]
How are B2B buyers using generative AI?
45%
B2B buyers who used generative AI during a recent purchase, mainly to gather information on vendors and products.
Source: Gartner, 20 May 2026 · Global B2B buyers · Survey of 645 buyers, August to September 2025[4]
7
Information sources the average buyer used during a recent purchase.
Source: Gartner, 20 May 2026 · Global B2B buyers · Survey of 645 buyers, August to September 2025[4]
69%
Buyers who turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights.
Source: Gartner, 20 May 2026 · Global B2B buyers · Survey of 645 buyers, August to September 2025[4]
51%
Buyers who say they are more likely to encounter misleading information from generative AI (49% say the same of sales reps).
Source: Gartner, 20 May 2026 · Global B2B buyers · Survey of 645 buyers, August to September 2025[4]
Is AI sending shoppers and customers to brands?
693%
Year-on-year growth in visits to US retail sites from generative AI tools during the 2025 holiday season.
Source: Adobe Analytics, 12 January 2026 · United States · Over 1 trillion visits to US retail sites, November to December 2025 holiday season[5]
31%
How much more often those AI-referred visits converted than visits from other traffic sources.
Source: Adobe Analytics, 12 January 2026 · United States · Over 1 trillion visits to US retail sites, November to December 2025 holiday season[5]
539%
Growth in generative AI traffic to travel sites over the same period. Financial services grew 266%, and tech and software 120%.
Source: Adobe Analytics, 12 January 2026 · United States · Over 1 trillion visits to US retail sites, November to December 2025 holiday season[5]
What seems to drive AI citations?
Vendor research with published methods. Correlation, not proof of cause.
No lift
Adding JSON-LD schema produced no meaningful increase in AI citations.
Source: Ahrefs vendor research, 11 May 2026 · Multiple AI platforms · 1,885 pages that added schema, matched against 4,000 controls[6]
Weak link
Domain link metrics barely predicted which of the top 50 domains AI systems mentioned.
Source: Ahrefs vendor research (Patrick Stox), 25 June 2025 · Global · 76.7m AI Overviews, 957k ChatGPT prompts and 953.5k Perplexity prompts[7]
0.664
Correlation between brand mentions across the web and AI Overview brand visibility.
Source: Ahrefs vendor research, 26 May 2025 · Global · 75,000 brands[8]
0.737
Correlation between YouTube mentions and brand visibility across ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews.
Source: Ahrefs vendor research, 12 December 2025 · Global · 75,000 brands[9]
43.8%
Share of ChatGPT-cited page types in the study that were “best X” listicles.
Source: Ahrefs vendor research, 4 December 2025 · Global · 26,283 source URLs across 750 top-of-funnel prompts[10]
28.3%
Share of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages with no Google organic visibility.
Source: Ahrefs vendor research, 28 October 2025 · Global · ChatGPT’s top 1,000 cited pages[11]
How we choose these statistics
- Primary sources and established research organisations first. We include research by analytics vendors only when the method, sample and date are published, and we label it as vendor research.
- Every figure shows its date, market and sample, because a US statistic is not a global one.
- Interpretation is labelled as ours and kept separate from the data.
- We re-check every figure each quarter and date the page when we do.
You're welcome to cite these statistics. Please link to the original source, and to this page if it helped.
Frequently asked questions
How many people use AI search?
More than 900 million people use ChatGPT every week (OpenAI, February 2026), and Google's AI Overviews reach over 2.5 billion people a month (Google, May 2026).
Do AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites?
Pew Research Center found people clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% without one, and clicked links inside the summary on 1% of visits (United States, March 2025).
How many B2B buyers use generative AI?
In a Gartner survey of 645 B2B buyers, 45% said they used generative AI during a recent purchase, mainly to research vendors and products.
Sources
- [1]
OpenAI announcement, reported by TechCrunch, 27 February 2026.
- [2]
Google I/O keynote, reported by CNBC, 19 May 2026.
- [3]
Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025.
- [4]
Gartner, 20 May 2026.
- [5]
Adobe Analytics, 12 January 2026.
- [6]
Ahrefs vendor research, 11 May 2026.
- [7]
Ahrefs vendor research (Patrick Stox), 25 June 2025.
- [8]
Ahrefs vendor research, 26 May 2025.
- [9]
Ahrefs vendor research, 12 December 2025.
- [10]
Ahrefs vendor research, 4 December 2025.
- [11]
Ahrefs vendor research, 28 October 2025.
