SEO, AI search & GEO statistics 2026

weekly active users on ChatGPT, the first time OpenAI publicly cited that figure.

monthly users of Google's AI Overviews.

monthly users of Google's AI Mode, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch.

of UK adults used an AI app or service to access news in the past month. ChatGPT was the most used, by 13% of adults.

of US consumers use AI for product discovery, compared with 13.6% who use traditional search.

of UK searches happen on Google. Bing is second with 6.1%.

of US Google searches ended without a click (January to April 2026), up from 60.45% in 2024.

lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page when an AI Overview is present (300,000 keywords).

desktop click-through rate for position one without and with an AI Overview.

of tracked desktop search results pages showed an AI Overview.

of Google visits led to a click on a result when an AI summary appeared, compared with when it did not.

of visits to a search page with an AI summary led to a click on a link inside the summary itself.

growth in ChatGPT referral traffic between January and August 2026.

of AI referral traffic came from ChatGPT in August 2026. Gemini (2.4%), Perplexity (1.1%) and Claude (0.8%) shared the rest.

share of website visits referred by ChatGPT across 101,574 sites in May 2026, a record high but still a small slice of traffic.

of AI-referred visits land on a homepage, compared with 17% of organic search visits.

conversion rate on transactional sites for visitors referred by ChatGPT, compared with visitors from Google.

of AI referral traffic in the UK comes from ChatGPT.

correlation between branded web mentions and visibility in AI Overviews, the strongest factor studied. Backlinks scored 0.218.

of AI Overview citations come from pages ranking in Google's top ten, down from 76% in Ahrefs' 2025 study. 31% come from beyond the top 100.

Ahrefs notes the two studies are not directly comparable because its citation detection has improved.

higher visibility in generative AI answers from adding citations, quotations and statistics to content.

of Google AI summaries cite three or more sources.

of consumers read reviews for local businesses.

will only use a business with four stars or more, up from 55% in 2025. 31% want 4.5 stars or more.

only pay attention to reviews written in the last three months.

won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews.

of people who use AI tools trust their business recommendations. ChatGPT (31%) and Google AI Mode (23%) are the most used for this.

Google's share of local review use fell in a year, while Apple Maps nearly doubled from 14% to 27%.

more retail conversions, and 10.1% more travel conversions, from a 0.1 second faster mobile site.

drop in traditional search engine volume by 2026, predicted by Gartner in 2024. Google has since reported search queries at an all-time high, alongside fast-growing AI Mode use.