Figment Research
AI search statistics 2026.
The numbers that matter on AI assistants, AI Overviews and what they mean for website traffic, checked against the original source and updated 30 October 2026.
How much traffic does AI search send to websites?
Between 0.32% and 1.08% of all website traffic, depending on the study (SE Ranking, 101,574 sites; Conductor, ten industries; both 2026), and ChatGPT sends about three-quarters of it (74.78% in SE Ranking’s data). On Google, Ahrefs reports that the top-ranking page has a 58% lower average click-through rate where an AI Overview appears (December 2025). That is an association; the study does not show an AI Overview caused the whole drop.
Key takeaways
- AI assistants are mainstream: ChatGPT reports 900 million weekly users and Google says the Gemini app has 950 million monthly users.
- In the UK, Ofcom estimated that about 30% of Google searches showed an AI Overview in 2025, and 54% of adults said they use AI tools in 2026 such as ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini.
- Studies link AI answers to fewer clicks. Pew found US adults clicked a normal result in 8% of visits with an AI summary against 15% without. Ahrefs found a 58% lower click-through rate for the top result where an AI Overview appears; that is a correlation, not proof of cause.
- AI referral traffic is small: 0.32% to 1.08% of website traffic in two studies that sampled different websites, with ChatGPT sending roughly three-quarters of it in SE Ranking’s data. SE Ranking also reports 16 times growth from 2024 to 2026.
- Brand mentions across the web track AI visibility far more closely than backlinks do (0.664 versus 0.218 correlation in Ahrefs’ study of 75,000 brands).
AI search usage statistics.
In short: 54% of UK adults say they use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini (Ofcom, 2026), and ChatGPT’s share of worldwide generative AI web traffic fell from about 76% to about 53% between June 2025 and May 2026 as Gemini grew (Similarweb).
Usage numbers come from the companies themselves and from independent trackers. Company-reported user counts and independently measured web visits use different definitions and periods, so do not compare them directly. Ofcom and Reuters show what adults say they do.
Similarweb’s share figures measure web traffic, not people, so they say little about use inside apps. They show how web visits are shifting between assistants.
AI Overviews statistics: how often they appear.
In short: Ofcom estimates about 30% of UK Google searches showed an AI Overview in 2025, and Conductor found 25.11% of 21.9 million tracked Google searches generated one in Q1 2026.
Google’s AI-written summaries now sit above the normal results for a large share of searches. UK-specific data is thinner than US data, so we lead with Ofcom and Reuters.
Prevalence varies by query type. Informational questions trigger AI Overviews far more often than local or transactional searches, which is why the share you see differs from study to study.
AI Overviews and click-through rates.
In short: Pew Research Center found people clicked a normal search result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when it did not (900 US adults, March 2025).
This is the finding most site owners feel first: you can hold your ranking and still see fewer visits when an AI answer sits above you. The studies below measure that gap in different ways.
| Study | Sample | Period | What was measured | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pew Research Center | 900 US adults’ browsing | Mar 2025 | Visits with a click on a normal result | 8% with an AI summary vs 15% without |
| Ahrefs | 300,000 keywords | Dec 2023 vs Dec 2025 | Average click-through rate of the top-ranking page when an AI Overview is present | 58% lower |
| Ahrefs (earlier study) | 300,000 keywords | Mar 2024 vs Mar 2025 | Same measure | 34.5% lower |
| Seer Interactive | 3,119 search terms, 42 organisations | Jun 2024 to Sep 2025 | Organic click-through rate on informational queries with an AI Overview | 1.76% fell to 0.61% |
Each study measures something different, so compare the direction, not the size. All four associate AI answers with fewer clicks. None establishes that AI answers caused the whole difference.
Different studies use different keyword sets, so the size of the gap varies. The cited studies associate AI Overviews with lower click-through rates; they do not establish that AI Overviews caused the entire difference. Being cited inside one may be worth pursuing, but Seer’s comparison is not proof of cause.
AI referral traffic statistics.
In short: Traffic from AI search engines to websites grew 16 times between 2024 and 2026, yet AI platforms still sent only 0.32% of all website traffic in SE Ranking’s study of 101,574 sites.
AI referral traffic is a small share of total visits for most sites. The studies below sampled different websites, so their results are not a measured universal range.
| Study | Sample | Period | AI share of all traffic | ChatGPT’s share of AI referrals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Ranking | 101,574 websites | Jan 2025 to Apr 2026 | 0.32% | 74.78% |
| Conductor | Websites in ten industries | Updated 6 Jul 2026 | 1.08% | – |
| Figment, State of AI Search 2026 | 21 UK business websites | Jun to Sep 2026 | 0.98% | 92% |
The samples differ in size and make-up, so these studies are not directly comparable. Ours is small and skews to professional and local services. A dash means the study does not give that figure on the page we cite.
AI citation statistics: what gets a brand cited.
In short: In Ahrefs’ study of 75,000 brands (May 2025), branded web mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks.
Most of the public research points the same way: AI systems lean on pages and brands that are widely mentioned, not simply on pages with the most links.
Correlation is not proof of cause, and the citation data is from mid-2025, so check it against current behaviour before you build a plan on it. The cited November 2025 study found no clear association between llms.txt and AI citation frequency.
Figment’s AI traffic data from 21 UK business sites.
Alongside third-party research, we measure AI traffic across the UK business websites we work with. Figures are aggregated and anonymised.
Sample: 21 UK business websites; 18 had full Search Console data. Measured using Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console and Ahrefs. Our sample is small and skews to professional and local services, so do not compare it directly with the larger studies above. Read the full study: State of AI Search 2026.
All sources.
Third-party figures above link to their publisher or, where we used secondary reporting, to that report. This table lists them in one place so you can check or cite them. Figures were checked against the source pages on 30 October 2026.
| Section | Figure | Publisher | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usage | 900 million – weekly active users on ChatGPT, announced by OpenAI | OpenAI, reported by TechCrunch | 27 Feb 2026 |
| Usage | 950 million – monthly active users on the Gemini app | Google / Alphabet | Q2 2026 (22 Jul 2026) |
| Usage | ~53% – share of worldwide generative AI web traffic held by ChatGPT, down from about 76% a year earlier | Similarweb | Jun 2025 to May 2026 |
| Usage | 27-28% – share for Gemini, up from under 9%. Claude rose from about 2% to about 9% | Similarweb | Jun 2025 to May 2026 |
| Usage | 54% – of UK adults say they use apps such as ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini | Ofcom | 2026 (published 2 Apr 2026) |
| Usage | 1.8 bn – UK visits to ChatGPT in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million a year earlier | Ofcom | Jan to Aug 2025 |
| Usage | 34% – weekly use of generative AI across six countries including the UK, up from 18% a year earlier (survey of adults in six countries) | Reuters Institute | Jun to Jul 2025 |
| Usage | 24% – in a six-country survey (including the UK) used generative AI to get information in the last week | Reuters Institute | Jun to Jul 2025 |
| AI Overviews | 30% – of UK searches showed an AI Overview, as reported by Ofcom | Ofcom | 2025 |
| AI Overviews | 53% – of UK adults say they see AI summaries often | Ofcom | 2025 |
| AI Overviews | 64% – of UK respondents saw an AI-generated answer to a search in the last week (54% across six countries) | Reuters Institute | Jun to Jul 2025 |
| AI Overviews | 75% – of online UK adults read AI search summaries at least some of the time; 42% often or always | Ofcom | 2026 |
| AI Overviews | 25.11% – of 21.9 million tracked Google searches generated an AI Overview in Conductor’s benchmark | Conductor | Q1 2026 |
| Clicks | 8% – of visits led to a click on a normal result when an AI summary appeared, against 15% without (US, 900 adults) | Pew Research Center | Mar 2025 |
| Clicks | 1% – of visits with an AI summary led to a click on a link inside the summary | Pew Research Center | Mar 2025 |
| Clicks | 26% – of visits with an AI summary ended the browsing session, against 16% with normal results only | Pew Research Center | Mar 2025 |
| Clicks | 58% – lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page when an AI Overview is present (300,000 keywords) | Ahrefs | Dec 2023 vs Dec 2025 |
| Clicks | 34.5% – lower in Ahrefs’ earlier study of the same measure | Ahrefs | Mar 2024 vs Mar 2025 |
| Clicks | 1.76 to 0.61% – organic click-through rate on informational queries with an AI Overview (3,119 terms, 42 organisations) | Seer Interactive | Jun 2024 to Sep 2025 |
| Clicks | 35% – higher average organic click-through rate when brands were cited inside the AI Overview than when they were not. This does not establish that citation causes the difference | Seer Interactive | Sep 2025 |
| Clicks | 33% – of people (six-country survey) say they always or often click links in AI search overviews | Reuters Institute | Jun to Jul 2025 |
| AI referrals | 0.32% – of all website traffic comes from AI platforms (101,574 websites) | SE Ranking | Jan 2025 to Apr 2026 |
| AI referrals | 1.08% – of all website traffic is AI referral traffic across ten industries | Conductor | Updated 6 Jul 2026 |
| AI referrals | 16x – growth in traffic from AI search engines to websites, 2024 to 2026 | SE Ranking | 2024 to 2026 |
| AI referrals | 74.78% – of AI referral traffic comes from ChatGPT | SE Ranking | Jan 2025 to Apr 2026 |
| AI referrals | 4.2% – of HTML requests on Cloudflare’s network came from AI bots on average | Cloudflare | 1 Jan to 2 Dec 2025 |
| AI referrals | ~80% – of AI bot activity is crawling to train models rather than to answer live questions | Cloudflare | Aug 2025 |
| Getting cited | 0.664 – correlation between branded web mentions and brand visibility in AI Overviews. Backlinks scored 0.218 (75,000 brands) | Ahrefs | May 2025 |
| Getting cited | 16.3% – of mentions in ChatGPT answers went to Wikipedia, the most-cited domain. 12.5% in Perplexity, 8.4% in AI Overviews | Ahrefs | Jun 2025 |
| Getting cited | 10.13% – of about 300,000 domains had an llms.txt file | SE Ranking, via Search Engine Journal | Nov 2025 |
| Getting cited | No clear – association between having an llms.txt file and how often a site is cited by AI answers, in this study | SE Ranking, via Search Engine Journal | Nov 2025 |
How we compiled this page. Sources are linked beside third-party figures, and secondary reporting is named where we used it (for example TechCrunch for OpenAI, Search Engine Journal for SE Ranking). Figment’s figures link to the underlying study. Where a company supplies the number (OpenAI, Google), we say so. Third-party figures are dated, because AI numbers go stale quickly. We refresh this page when new data lands, and note the date at the top.
Frequently asked questions.
How many people use ChatGPT?
OpenAI announced 900 million weekly active users in February 2026, as reported by TechCrunch. In the UK, Ofcom counted 1.8 billion visits to ChatGPT in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million a year earlier, and 54% of UK adults said in 2026 that they use AI tools such as ChatGPT.
How much traffic does AI search send to websites?
Still very little: two studies on different website samples put it at 0.32% and 1.08% of all visits. SE Ranking measured 0.32% across 101,574 sites and Conductor 1.08% across ten industries; our own sample of 21 UK business sites showed 0.98%. ChatGPT sends most of it: 74.78% of AI referrals in SE Ranking’s data.
How often do AI Overviews appear in the UK?
On about 30% of UK Google searches in 2025, according to Ofcom, and 53% of UK adults say they see AI summaries often. Conductor’s Q1 2026 benchmark found an AI Overview on 25.11% of 21.9 million tracked searches. The share varies with the type of query, so studies using different keyword sets report different figures.
Do AI Overviews reduce clicks?
The studies we checked associate AI Overviews with fewer clicks, but none proves cause. Pew found US adults clicked a normal result in 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without. Ahrefs reported a 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page where an AI Overview is present. The gap varies by keyword set.
How can a business get cited in AI answers?
Build mentions of your brand across the web and publish clear, quotable answers on your own pages. In Ahrefs’ study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks. Our AI Visibility Audit shows where your brand stands today.
Does llms.txt help with AI visibility?
The cited November 2025 study found no clear association between llms.txt and AI citation frequency. SE Ranking analysed about 300,000 domains, and 10.13% had an llms.txt file. The study cannot rule out future effects, so treat the file as optional.
Cite this page.
You are welcome to quote these figures. Please cite the original publisher for third-party figures (linked beside each one) and this page as the place you found them. For Figment’s own figures, cite State of AI Search 2026.
Figment (2026) AI search statistics 2026. Updated 30 October 2026. Available at: https://www.figmentagency.com/ai-search-statistics/
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