---
title: "594 AI Search Statistics for 2026"
description: "594 AI search statistics for 2026: usage, zero-click rates, AI Overviews, which domains get cited and referral traffic. Every figure sourced and dated."
url: "https://www.maltelandwehr.de/ai-search-statistics/"
lang: en
---

# 594 AI Search Statistics for 2026

How many people use AI search, what it does to clicks, which sources answer engines cite, and what actually moves visibility. Every figure names its source and the month it was measured.

Published 28 September 2026, last updated 15 October 2026.

## Key takeaways

- About half of US adults (**49%**) said they use AI chatbots in 2026, up from **33%** in 2024. [Pew Research Center, June 2026](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/)
- ChatGPT’s zero-click rate is roughly **99%**. Google AI Mode’s is about **95%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), May 2026](https://www.goldcast.io/blog-post/geo-optimization-for-ai-search)
- The measured click-through impact of Google AI Overviews is **-40%**. [Malte Landwehr meta-analysis, May 2025](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/1920139341696844284)
- Reddit is the most-cited domain in AI search across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/top-domains-cited-by-ai-search-analysis-based-on-30m-sources)
- **51%** of B2B buyers start their research with AI search instead of Google, up from **29%** in 2025. [Precis B2Breakfast 2026, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-am-sitting-at-the-airport-right-now-thinking-activity-7450202215136317440-VGvW)
- A click from a large language model has been valued at **4x** a click from organic search. [Precis B2Breakfast 2026, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-am-sitting-at-the-airport-right-now-thinking-activity-7450202215136317440-VGvW)

## Why these numbers matter

AI search stopped being an experiment some time in 2025. Close to 4 billion people now use a language model every month, monthly sessions across AI tools are 56% the size of search worldwide, and in the six largest European markets visits to the leading LLM platforms went from near zero at the end of 2023 to 1.4 billion in May 2026 while search volume stayed flat. For a marketing team the question is no longer whether answer engines matter. It is how visibility inside them works, and which part of it you can actually measure.

This page collects 594 statistics on AI search in 33 sections. They come from primary sources: Pew Research Center, Adobe, Ahrefs, Similarweb, Semrush, Graphite, BCG, Cloudflare, Google, OpenAI, Peec AI, academic papers, court filings and company earnings calls. Every figure names its source and, with one exception, the month it was measured. Most also link to the source, so you can check them yourself. Numbers without a date are worthless in this field: most of what follows has a shelf life measured in months.

Read the numbers with the usual caution. The studies below use different samples, different engines, different markets and different definitions of a search, so two figures on the same topic can disagree by a wide margin and both still be right about what they measured. Where that happens, both are on the page rather than one of them being picked as the favourite.

If a figure here is out of date or wrong, Malte Landwehr would rather fix it than leave it on the page.

Contents

1. [How big AI search has become](#how-big-ai-search-has-become)
2. [ChatGPT’s real search volume versus Google](#chatgpt-s-real-search-volume-versus-google)
3. [Zero clicks, CTR and the end of the referral](#zero-clicks-ctr-and-the-end-of-the-referral)
4. [Google AI Overviews: coverage and behaviour](#google-ai-overviews-coverage-and-behaviour)
5. [Google AI Mode](#google-ai-mode)
6. [Which domains AI engines actually cite](#which-domains-ai-engines-actually-cite)
7. [How fresh cited content has to be](#how-fresh-cited-content-has-to-be)
8. [Reddit in AI search](#reddit-in-ai-search)
9. [Machine-translated Reddit pages](#machine-translated-reddit-pages)
10. [Which content formats get cited](#which-content-formats-get-cited)
11. [Citation rates: a winner-take-most distribution](#citation-rates-a-winner-take-most-distribution)
12. [The listicle economy](#the-listicle-economy)
13. [Query fan-outs: what engines really search for](#query-fan-outs-what-engines-really-search-for)
14. [AI search still runs on the English web](#ai-search-still-runs-on-the-english-web)
15. [Inside ChatGPT’s retrieval stack](#inside-chatgpt-s-retrieval-stack)
16. [API versus user interface: the same prompts, different answers](#api-versus-user-interface-the-same-prompts-different-answers)
17. [How AI agents actually read your site](#how-ai-agents-actually-read-your-site)
18. [Crawlers, rendering and technical GEO](#crawlers-rendering-and-technical-geo)
19. [The llms.txt question](#the-llms-txt-question)
20. [Local search and maps in AI](#local-search-and-maps-in-ai)
21. [AI shopping and ecommerce](#ai-shopping-and-ecommerce)
22. [Ads inside AI answers](#ads-inside-ai-answers)
23. [AI referral traffic: smaller, but far more valuable](#ai-referral-traffic-smaller-but-far-more-valuable)
24. [What public companies report about AI traffic](#what-public-companies-report-about-ai-traffic)
25. [Revenue and attribution](#revenue-and-attribution)
26. [What actually moves visibility: tests and case studies](#what-actually-moves-visibility-tests-and-case-studies)
27. [B2B buying behaviour](#b2b-buying-behaviour)
28. [Consumer behaviour in AI-assisted research](#consumer-behaviour-in-ai-assisted-research)
29. [Brand perception, bias and hallucination](#brand-perception-bias-and-hallucination)
30. [The risk of AI-generated content](#the-risk-of-ai-generated-content)
31. [Publishers and the traffic recession](#publishers-and-the-traffic-recession)
32. [The GEO industry itself](#the-geo-industry-itself)
33. [Peec AI by the numbers](#peec-ai-by-the-numbers)

## How big AI search has become

1. About half of U.S. adults (**49%**) say they ever use AI chatbots in 2026, up from **33%** in 2024. [Pew Research Center, June 2026](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/)
2. Almost **4 billion** people use LLMs globally every month. [Auto Trader, May 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
3. Monthly sessions of AI tools are now **56%** the size of search worldwide, and **34%** the size of search in the US. [Graphite, March 2026](https://graphite.io/five-percent/ai-is-much-bigger-than-you-think)
4. Search-related usage of AI is now **28%** the size of search worldwide and **17%** in the US. [Graphite, March 2026](https://graphite.io/five-percent/ai-is-much-bigger-than-you-think)
5. From December 2024 to December 2025, AI usage in the US increased by **300%**. [Graphite, March 2026](https://graphite.io/five-percent/ai-is-much-bigger-than-you-think)
6. **83%** of AI usage worldwide happens in mobile apps. In the US it is **75%**. [Graphite, March 2026](https://graphite.io/five-percent/ai-is-much-bigger-than-you-think)
7. ChatGPT accounts for **20%** of search-related traffic worldwide and **12%** in the US. [Graphite, March 2026](https://graphite.io/five-percent/ai-is-much-bigger-than-you-think)
8. **10%** to **15%** of all search is already happening in AI search. [seoClarity, April 2026](https://www.seoclarity.net/arcai-3.0-roadmap-reveal-on-demand/)
9. Monthly visits to the leading LLM platforms across six European markets (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal) grew from near zero at the end of 2023 to **1.4 billion** in May 2026. [SimilarWeb via BCG, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
10. Monthly search engine visits across those same six European markets stayed broadly flat while LLM usage scaled, at **13.0 billion** at the end of 2023 and **12.5 billion** in May 2026. [SimilarWeb via BCG, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
11. ChatGPT’s share of LLM visits across six European markets fell from about **90%** in late 2024 to **57%** in May 2026. [SimilarWeb via BCG, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
12. Gemini’s share of LLM visits across six European markets rose from **6%** in September 2025 to **27%** in May 2026. [SimilarWeb via BCG, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
13. Claude’s share of LLM visits across six European markets rose from **3%** to **10%** between March 2026 and May 2026. [SimilarWeb via BCG, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
14. DeepSeek peaked at a **5%** share of LLM visits across six European markets in March 2025. [SimilarWeb via BCG, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
15. In May 2026 the share of LLM visits across six European markets was ChatGPT **57%**, Gemini **27%**, Claude **10%**, DeepSeek **2%**, and **1%** each for Perplexity, Copilot and Grok. [SimilarWeb via BCG, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
16. Both Grok and Character AI are now bigger than Perplexity by usage. [Third-party usage data via Malte Landwehr, January 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_both-grok-and-character-ai-are-now-bigger-activity-7421571189971591169-WKC_)
17. Claude traffic grew **3x** from January to March 2026 and overtook Perplexity as number three in AI search. [Malte Landwehr, MonthlyLandwehr podcast, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_monthlylandwehr-monthlylandwehr-activity-7450806453298192384-P8Xe)
18. B2B websites already receive similar click volumes from Claude and Gemini, despite Gemini being **4x** bigger in overall web usage. [Malte Landwehr, MonthlyLandwehr podcast, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_monthlylandwehr-monthlylandwehr-activity-7450806453298192384-P8Xe)
19. Google AI Overviews reaches **2.5 billion** monthly users. [Google I/O 2026, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
20. Google Gemini has **0.9 billion** monthly users. [Google, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
21. Google AI Mode has surpassed **1 billion** monthly active users globally. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
22. ChatGPT reached **700 million** weekly active users in July 2025. [The Information, July 2025](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-hits-12-billion-annualized-revenue-breaks-700-million-chatgpt-weekly-active-users)
23. ChatGPT had more than **500 million** weekly active users in July 2025 and **400 million** in February 2025. [Axios and CNBC, 2025](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/21/sam-altman-openai-trump-dc-fed)
24. ChatGPT handles **2.5 billion** prompts per day globally. [Axios, July 2025](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/21/sam-altman-openai-trump-dc-fed)
25. OpenAI had **3 million** paying business users in June 2025 and **5 million** in August 2025. [Brad Lightcap, OpenAI COO, August 2025](https://x.com/bradlightcap/status/19513891491494056188)
26. OpenAI reported **2 million** paying enterprise customers in February 2025. [CNBC, February 2025](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/20/openai-tops-400-million-users-despite-deepseeks-emergence.html)
27. From June 2024 to June 2025, usage of AI chat and search tools grew **121%** in the US and **158%** in the EU and UK, while traditional search engine usage in the US declined **8%**. [Datos and SparkToro, State of Search 2025 Q2](https://datos.live/report/state-of-search-q2-2025/)
28. From June 2024 to June 2025, the number of monthly Google searches by US desktop users declined by **5%**. [Datos and SparkToro, State of Search 2025 Q2](https://datos.live/report/state-of-search-q2-2025/)
29. From June 2024 to June 2025, the share of UK desktop users using ChatGPT increased from **20.5%** to **30.5%**. [Datos and SparkToro, State of Search 2025 Q2](https://datos.live/report/state-of-search-q2-2025/)
30. In June 2025, **5.6%** of U.S. search traffic on desktop browsers went to an AI-powered large language model such as ChatGPT or Perplexity. [WSJ and Datos, July 2025](https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-search-is-growing-more-quickly-than-expected-f75aa1ca)
31. Between January and September 2025 in the UK, Google had **77.3 million** users versus ChatGPT’s **16.9 million**, and **99%** of ChatGPT users also used Google. SimilarWeb, BrightonSEO October 2025
32. **25%** of Google users have tried AI Mode, both in the US and the UK. SimilarWeb, BrightonSEO October 2025
33. Google’s AI Mode is the fastest chatbot ever to reach **100 million** users. SimilarWeb, BrightonSEO October 2025
34. On desktop in August 2025, **46%** of US and **38%** of UK AI Mode users used it on more than one day. SimilarWeb, BrightonSEO October 2025
35. When a person starts using ChatGPT, their Google usage measured by page views decreases **2%** after 3 months and **8%** after 23 months. [Coatue, June 2025](https://www.coatue.com/blog/company-update/coatues-2025-emw-keynote-replay)
36. **66%** of students globally now use ChatGPT. [Digital Education Council Global AI Student Survey 2024](https://www.digitaleducationcouncil.com/post/digital-education-council-global-ai-student-survey-2024)
37. **72%** of people use AI tools for search, and **14%** use them for search daily. [HigherVisibility, February 2025](https://www.highervisibility.com/seo/learn/how-people-search/)
38. **44%** of people prefer LLM-based search and answer engines. Only **31%** prefer classic search engines. [McKinsey, October 2025](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/new-front-door-to-the-internet-winning-in-the-age-of-ai-search)
39. **62%** of brands are invisible in AI answers. [Tactixx 2026, July 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_yesterday-i-attended-tactixx-a-performance-activity-7478025614277500932-TkrG)
40. **3%** of all queries happen in AI or LLM tools. Semrush, Q4 2025

## ChatGPT’s real search volume versus Google

1. ChatGPT handles roughly **600 million** searches per day. [Peec AI, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
2. ChatGPT likely processes between **500 million** and **1.7 billion** searches per day. [Peec AI, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
3. ChatGPT’s search volume is between **4%** and **12%** of Google’s search volume. [Peec AI, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
4. Google is **8x** to **22x** bigger than ChatGPT in search volume. [Peec AI, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
5. Most search-style queries on ChatGPT need fewer than 2 messages. [Peec AI, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
6. Google processes approximately **14 billion** searches per day. [Google, via Peec AI, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
7. **24%** of ChatGPT prompts can be classified as information-seeking search queries. [OpenAI and Harvard, via Peec AI, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
8. **65%** of ChatGPT usage qualifies as search. [Ahrefs, February 2026](https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpt-has-12-percent-of-googles-search-volume/)
9. ChatGPT has **12%** of Google’s search volume. [Ahrefs, February 2026](https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpt-has-12-percent-of-googles-search-volume/)
10. ChatGPT has **1.2** to **1.4 billion** search-like tasks per day, roughly **9%** of Google’s daily searches. [seoClarity, September 2025](https://www.seoclarity.net/research/how-many-searches-really-happen-on-chatgpt-new-data-refined-model)
11. ChatGPT has **4%** to **9%** of Google’s search volume. [Sistrix, December 2025](https://www.sistrix.de/news/chatgpt-vs-google-wie-gross-ist-der-herausforderer-wirklich/)
12. ChatGPT represents only **0.6%** of Google’s search volume when measured by outgoing clicks to websites. [Ahrefs, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
13. Google sends **190x** more traffic to websites than ChatGPT. [Ahrefs, February 2026](https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpt-has-12-percent-of-googles-search-volume/)
14. Traffic share in July 2025 was **41.91%** for Google and **0.19%** for ChatGPT. [ChatGPT-vs-Google (Ahrefs), August 2025](https://chatgpt-vs-google.com/)
15. In Germany, **40%** of ChatGPT prompts are searches or comparable to searches, **40%** are to create or edit text, and **20%** are emotional, roleplay or creative. [Hanns Kronenberg / GPT-Insights, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hannskronenberg_wie-wir-chatgpt-wirklich-nutzen-deutschland-activity-7353793789125107714-efeA)
16. **38%** of ChatGPT queries are generative (“write or make something”) and therefore not search. [Profound, 2025](https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/chatgpt-intent-landmark-study)
17. **12%** of ChatGPT queries are no-intent (“thank you”, “please”) and therefore not search. [Profound, 2025](https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/chatgpt-intent-landmark-study)
18. **30%** of prompts have search intent. [SparkToro, 2025](https://sparktoro.com/blog/new-research-google-search-grew-20-in-2024-receives-373x-more-searches-than-chatgpt/)
19. **31%** of ChatGPT prompts trigger a web search. For commerce it is **41%**, for travel **22%**, under **20%** for credit cards and almost **60%** for local. [Nectiv Digital, October 2025](https://nectivdigital.com/new-data-study-what-queries-is-chatgpt-using-behind-the-scenes/)
20. ChatGPT conducted a web search in **100%** of more than 8,000 chats about trending news topics. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_every-single-day-i-ask-chatgpt-questions-activity-7490311820524838913-3nVG)

## Zero clicks, CTR and the end of the referral

1. ChatGPT’s zero-click rate is roughly **99%**. Google AI Mode’s is about **95%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), May 2026](https://www.goldcast.io/blog-post/geo-optimization-for-ai-search)
2. **35%** to **40%** of Google searches lead to a click. In ChatGPT and Google AI Mode only **1%** to **5%** of search-like prompts result in a click. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), January 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dark-chat-manifesto-end-attribution-we-know-malte-landwehr-8vxge)
3. The zero-click rate in search has risen from **60%** to **65%** to **70%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), February 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-sat-down-with-maximilian-ziche-and-we-discussed-activity-7430932179263791105-pmHH)
4. Web analytics misses more than **95%** of the impact of AI search. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_can-you-measure-ai-search-yes-but-you-need-activity-7490711128340135938-RvIX)
5. Google’s CTR is **29.2%**. ChatGPT’s CTR is **0.84%**, which is **96%** lower. [Ahrefs, February 2026](https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpt-has-12-percent-of-googles-search-volume/)
6. ChatGPT’s CTR is **3.5%** for pure-search prompts, **1.6%** for asking-intent prompts and **1.3%** for broad-search prompts. [Ahrefs, February 2026](https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpt-has-12-percent-of-googles-search-volume/)
7. CTR in ChatGPT is below **1%**. [Leaked publisher report, December 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7396260785963864064/)
8. An OpenAI software engineer wrote about ChatGPT’s source links: “No matter how prominently we show the links, users won’t click.” [Publishers’ unredacted brief, NYT et al. v. OpenAI and Microsoft, September 2026](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.640396/gov.uscourts.nysd.640396.1977.1.pdf)
9. Microsoft’s own data shows click-through rates from Bing Chat and Copilot are **87%** to **93%** lower than from Bing search for New York Times properties, **83%** to **91%** lower for Daily News domains and **51%** to **94%** lower for Ziff Davis properties. [Microsoft internal data in NYT et al. v. OpenAI and Microsoft, September 2026](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.640396/gov.uscourts.nysd.640396.1977.1.pdf)
10. Google users click a link inside an AI Overview in only **1%** of visits where an AI Overview appears. [Pew Research Center, July 2025](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/)
11. On 20 September 2026, **26.2%** of Google AI Overviews carried an external link inside the answer text. Before 11 September 2026 it was close to **0%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), September 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2101973324507062621)
12. The median CTR per task in Google’s AI Mode is **0%**, and **78%** of AI Mode sessions have a CTR of **0%**. [Growth Memo, October 2025](https://www.growth-memo.com/p/what-our-ai-mode-user-behavior-study)
13. Google AI Mode has a click-through rate of **3.8%** to **5.4%**. [iPullRank, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
14. Google AI Mode has a click-through rate of **7%** per session. [Semrush, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
15. **24%** of Google Search sessions result in a click, versus **5%** of Google AI Mode sessions. [iPullRank and Similarweb, July 2025](https://ipullrank.com/referral-patterns-ai-mode)
16. Google’s AI Mode is **92%** to **94%** zero-click. [Semrush, June 2025](https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-ai-mode-seo-impact/)
17. Google’s AI Mode has **90%** fewer clicks than organic search. Traditional search on Google has a **20%** CTR, AI Mode has **3%**. SimilarWeb, BrightonSEO October 2025
18. In June 2025, **57%** of Google searches on desktop in the US did not result in a click to an external website. In the EU and UK it was **53%**. [Datos and SparkToro, State of Search 2025 Q2](https://datos.live/report/state-of-search-q2-2025/)
19. Zero-click searches rose from **56%** to nearly **69%** between May 2024 and May 2025, after the launch of AI Overviews. [SimilarWeb, June 2025](https://www.similarweb.com/corp/reports/generative-ai-publishers/)
20. Roughly **40%** of Google searches result in a click to an external website. [SparkToro, October 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-search-engine-market-share-of-chatgpt)
21. The measured CTR impact of Google AI Overviews across more than 15 studies ranges from +**19%** to -**85%**. [Malte Landwehr meta-analysis, May 2025](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/1920139341696844284)
22. The average CTR impact of Google AI Overviews is -**40%**. The median is -**37%**. [Malte Landwehr meta-analysis, May 2025](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/1920139341696844284)
23. Google AI Overviews reduce clicks to number-one-ranked content by **58%**. Position 10 loses **19.4%** of clicks. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
24. Organic CTR on Google dropped **24%** from 2024 to 2025, and on some positions by up to **62%**. [seoClarity, July 2025](https://www.seoclarity.net/mobile-desktop-ctr-study-11302/)
25. Measured through logfile hits, CTR in AI search runs below **0.1%** for top-of-funnel pages, **1%** to **1.5%** for purchase-intent pages, **9%** for downloads and below **0.5%** for the homepage. PromptWatch, BrightonSEO October 2025
26. From June 2024 to June 2025, the share of US desktop Google searches resulting in an organic click declined **6%**, while the share resulting in a paid click increased **10%**. [Datos and SparkToro, State of Search 2025 Q2](https://datos.live/report/state-of-search-q2-2025/)
27. From June 2024 to June 2025, the share of EU and UK desktop Google searches resulting in an organic click declined **4%**, while paid clicks increased **50%**. [Datos and SparkToro, State of Search 2025 Q2](https://datos.live/report/state-of-search-q2-2025/)
28. Google AI Overviews reduced clicks by **35%** in April 2025. [Ahrefs, February 2026](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks-update/)
29. Google AI Overviews reduced clicks by **58%** by December 2025. [Ahrefs, February 2026](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks-update/)
30. Users click a traditional result in **8%** of visits where a Google AI Overview is present, against **15%** where it is not. [Pew Research Center, July 2025](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/)
31. Organic traffic to customer sites declined **27%** year over year. [HubSpot, September 2026](https://www.hubspot.com/company-news/aeo-data-buyers-using-ai-search-more-likely-to-purchase)
32. Queries that show a Google AI Overview have a **61%** lower click-through rate. HubSpot, September 2026
33. **23%** of all searches are zero-click, up **4 percentage points**. Semrush, Q4 2025

## Google AI Overviews: coverage and behaviour

1. AI Overviews appeared in **56.9%** of Google searches in April 2025 and in **86.7%** in April 2026. [Peec AI, 500,000 prompts, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
2. AI Overviews appear for **88.5%** of decision-stage prompts. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
3. AI Overviews appear in **93%** to **97%** of queries with a clear intent pattern such as short fact, comparison or definition. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
4. AI Overviews appear in **67%** of queries with ambiguous intent. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
5. AI Overviews appear in **76%** of Google searches in the EU and **90.3%** outside the EU. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
6. AI Overviews appear in **91.4%** of Google searches in the US, **91.7%** in the UK, **86.5%** in Australia, **82.9%** in Poland and **75.6%** in Germany. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
7. AI Overviews appear in **0%** of Google searches in France, because neither AI Overviews nor AI Mode is served there. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
8. One-word queries trigger an AI Overview almost **80%** of the time, two-word queries **64.6%**, five-word queries **78.5%**, 6 to 7 word queries **84.2%**, 8 to 10 word queries **87.7%**, 11 to 15 word queries **89.1%**, and queries above 15 words between **87%** and **91%**. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
9. Across all query word counts, AI Overviews appear in **87%** of Google searches. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-overviews-is-the-most-undertracked-ai-search-500-000-prompts-show-why)
10. **29.1%** of 321 tracked news searches in the US triggered a Google AI Overview. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), July 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2077038030955643157)
11. Google’s AI Overviews appear for **21%** of all keywords. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
12. Google’s AI Overviews appear on **9.5%** of single-word queries and **46.4%** of queries with seven or more words. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
13. **99.9%** of Google AI Overviews appear on informational queries. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
14. Shopping queries trigger a Google AI Overview only **3.2%** of the time. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
15. Indonesia leads the world in Google AI Overview coverage at **37.2%** of queries. The US rate is **20.5%**. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
16. AI Overview coverage per country: Indonesia **37%**, Philippines **29%**, Mexico **29%**, India **27%**, Nigeria **25%**, Brazil **25%**, Japan **25%**, USA **21%**, Canada **19%**, UK **19%**, Germany **19%**. [Aleyda Solis, November 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aleyda_which-countries-have-the-most-ai-overviews-activity-7392246489688752128-zrDN/)
17. **18%** of searches trigger an AI Overview. [Conductor, July 2025](https://web.archive.org/web/20250826144232/https://www.conductor.com/academy/ai-overviews-analysis/)
18. **20%** of keywords in the US and UK show AI Overviews. [seoClarity, July 2025](https://www.seoclarity.net/mobile-desktop-ctr-study-11302/)
19. In Germany, across **1.2 million** analysed keywords, **11%** of keywords have an AI Overview. Metrics Tools, October 2025
20. In Germany, AI Overviews have a median of 9 sources, mostly between 6 and 11, and rarely more than 30. Metrics Tools, October 2025
21. **37.9%** of URLs cited in Google AI Overviews rank in the SERP top 10, down from about **76%** in July 2025. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
22. **60%** of Google AI Overview citations are not in Google’s top 20. [Semrush, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/apwarden_ai-in-seo-myth-vs-reality-ugcPost-7352991660043104256-6ydo/)
23. **59%** of Google AI Overviews contain no brands or entities. For AI Mode it is **34.66%**. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
24. Google AI Overviews have a **70%** chance of changing between observations, yet stay semantically consistent at **0.95** cosine similarity. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
25. The average length of content cited in Google AI Overviews is 1,282 words, with near-zero correlation between word count and being cited. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
26. **53.4%** of pages cited in Google AI Overviews are under 1,000 words. Only **16%** are over 2,000 words. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
27. The share of Google’s “People Also Asked” answers that are AI-generated rose from **18%** in July 2025 to **27%** in August and **38%** in September 2025. [AlsoAsked, November 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/markseo_new-data-from-alsoasked-shows-google-is-activity-7383815094972985345-ihDs/)
28. **80%** of queries on Google in the US show the “AI Mode” tab. [Brodie Clark and Nozzle, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brodieclark_new-ai-mode-data-how-often-does-the-ai-mode-activity-7351502982510723074-EAcy)
29. One site with AI Overviews gained **46%** more Search Console impressions and **80%** more visibility in SEO tools, while its clicks dropped **33%**. [Campixx 2026, June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_earlier-this-week-i-attended-the-campixx-activity-7473810609541791744-aiF_)
30. Google AI Overviews appear on **78%** of finance and accounting queries. seoClarity, July 2026
31. Google AI Overviews appear on **56%** of computer and software queries. seoClarity, July 2026
32. Google AI Overviews appear on **49%** of business and marketing queries. seoClarity, July 2026
33. Google AI Overviews appear on **43%** of health and healthcare queries. seoClarity, July 2026
34. Google AI Overviews appear on **22%** of apparel queries. seoClarity, July 2026

## Google AI Mode

1. Google AI Mode queries have more than doubled every quarter since the U.S. launch in May 2025. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
2. The average Google AI Mode search query is triple the length of a traditional search query. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
3. Follow-up queries in Google AI Mode have increased by more than **40%** on average per month in the U.S. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
4. More than 1 in 6 Google AI Mode searches in the U.S. are multimodal, meaning non-text. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
5. Google AI Mode searches with image input are growing by more than **40%** month over month since launch. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
6. Brainstorming-related queries in Google AI Mode have grown **30%** faster than AI Mode queries overall since launch. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
7. Queries starting with “which” in Google AI Mode have grown **40%** faster than AI Mode queries overall over the past six months. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
8. Planning-related queries in Google AI Mode have grown **80%** faster than AI Mode queries overall over the past six months. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
9. Image creation queries on Google AI Mode have more than tripled since the start of 2026. [Google, AI Mode U.S. Insights, May 2026](https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/AI-Mode-US-Insights.pdf)
10. Google’s AI Mode cites **12.6** sources on average, versus roughly 3 for AI Overviews. [Growth Memo, November 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinindig_we-now-have-a-collective-body-of-10-studies-activity-7386423860818202624-ubTh/)
11. There is only a **10.7%** URL overlap between Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews. [Growth Memo, November 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinindig_we-now-have-a-collective-body-of-10-studies-activity-7386423860818202624-ubTh/)
12. Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews reach the same conclusions **86%** of the time but have only **13.7%** URL overlap in their citations. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
13. A page cited in a Google AI Overview has a **61%** chance of also appearing in AI Mode. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
14. Only **15.6%** of Google AI Mode citations overlap with the Google Top 10, down from **40%** a year earlier. [Internetwarriors GEO Study 2026](https://internetwarriors.de/geo/geo-studie-2026)
15. Domain authority still matters at domain level, not URL level: **51%** of Google AI Mode citations come from Top 10 domains, just from different pages. [Internetwarriors GEO Study 2026](https://internetwarriors.de/geo/geo-studie-2026)
16. **68%** of queries have at least one Google AI Mode citation from the top 20 organic results, but only **20%** of total AI Mode citations come from the top 20. [seoClarity, August 2025](https://www.seoclarity.net/ai-mode-rankings-overlap)
17. Share of organic rank positions appearing in Google AI Mode: rank 1 **27%**, rank 2 **21%**, rank 3 **17%**, rank 4 **11%**, rank 5 **14%**, rank 6 **14%**, rank 7 **10%**, rank 8 **12%**, rank 9 **9%**, rank 10 **9%**. [seoClarity, August 2025](https://www.seoclarity.net/ai-mode-rankings-overlap)
18. The overlap of organic ranking in Google and citation in Google AI Mode is **42%**. For mentions it is only **9%**. [Semrush, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marcustober_ai-stealing-your-content-activity-7355584935035904000-awNh)
19. Google’s AI Mode is more likely to recommend smaller or challenger brands than traditional Google search. SimilarWeb, BrightonSEO October 2025
20. **66%** of “knowledgeable” respondents find Google’s AI Mode results more helpful than Google Search. [Oppenheimer, July 2025](https://www.ainvest.com/news/oppenheimer-boosts-alphabet-price-target-growing-ai-adoption-survey-results-2507/)
21. Time on site after a click: Google **8.5**, AI Mode **7.2**, ChatGPT **15.3**. Page views after a click: Google **9.7**, AI Mode **7.5**, ChatGPT **13.1**. SimilarWeb, BrightonSEO October 2025
22. Pictures in your Google account influence Google AI Mode results. [LLM Mastery featuring Charles Floate, July 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZkBz95Ne6U)

## Which domains AI engines actually cite

1. Reddit.com is the most-cited domain in AI search across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/top-domains-cited-by-ai-search-analysis-based-on-30m-sources)
2. The ten most-cited domains in AI search are Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Forbes, G2, Yelp, Facebook, Medium and TechRadar in that order. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/top-domains-cited-by-ai-search-analysis-based-on-30m-sources)
3. Reddit is the number 1 or number 2 most-cited source in every AI engine tested. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/top-domains-cited-by-ai-search-analysis-based-on-30m-sources)
4. YouTube is the most-cited domain in both Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/top-domains-cited-by-ai-search-analysis-based-on-30m-sources)
5. Reddit is the most-cited domain in Gemini and in Perplexity. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/top-domains-cited-by-ai-search-analysis-based-on-30m-sources)
6. Wikipedia is the most-cited domain in ChatGPT. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/top-domains-cited-by-ai-search-analysis-based-on-30m-sources)
7. G2, TechRadar and PC Mag are the sources most cited by LLMs in B2B software. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), July 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_if-you-want-llms-to-recommend-you-third-party-activity-7487780914786320385-Wwn2)
8. Reuters and AP News both place in the top 5 most-cited domains in every news category in ChatGPT. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_every-single-day-i-ask-chatgpt-questions-activity-7490311820524838913-3nVG)
9. Reuters holds **38%** of ChatGPT citations for international politics news prompts and **32%** for business and economy prompts. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_every-single-day-i-ask-chatgpt-questions-activity-7490311820524838913-3nVG)
10. AP News is the most-cited domain for crime and safety news prompts in ChatGPT with **27%** of citations. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_every-single-day-i-ask-chatgpt-questions-activity-7490311820524838913-3nVG)
11. In the health news category, CDC, FDA, NIH and WHO have unusually high citation rates in ChatGPT. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_every-single-day-i-ask-chatgpt-questions-activity-7490311820524838913-3nVG)
12. YouTube appears more often than any other domain in ChatGPT’s sources sidebar for news prompts, but never receives an in-line citation across thousands of chats. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_every-single-day-i-ask-chatgpt-questions-activity-7490311820524838913-3nVG)
13. LinkedIn is a top 20 LLM source and more influential on LLM answers than Slashdot, Medium and SourceForge. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), 1.2 million citations, January 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_if-you-work-in-b2b-linkedin-should-be-part-activity-7422546631486533632-hZym)
14. LinkedIn Pulse is responsible for **75%** of LinkedIn citations in LLMs for software purchase prompts. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), 1.2 million citations, January 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_if-you-work-in-b2b-linkedin-should-be-part-activity-7422546631486533632-hZym)
15. LinkedIn content with just 3 likes can perform well in LLMs. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), January 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_if-you-work-in-b2b-linkedin-should-be-part-activity-7422546631486533632-hZym)
16. Grok’s top cited sources are **29%** X, **2%** Reddit, **0.7%** Forbes, **0.6%** Quora and **0.5%** CNET. [Profound, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7353489390758731777/)
17. Reddit is the number 1 cited source across the big answer engines. YouTube is number 2. [Profound, December 2025](https://speakerdeck.com/joshbly/we-analyzed-250-million-ai-search-results-heres-what-i-found)
18. **6%** of all ChatGPT citations are Reddit. Profound, pre July 2025
19. ChatGPT cites Reddit for **25%** of questions, Perplexity for **22%** and Gemini for **0.2%**. AirOps, pre July 2025
20. **17.4%** of citations on ChatGPT are user-generated content. [Profound, December 2025](https://speakerdeck.com/joshbly/we-analyzed-250-million-ai-search-results-heres-what-i-found)
21. More ChatGPT citations go to domains with a domain authority of 20 to 40 than to domains with a domain authority of 80 to 100. [AirOps, March 2026](https://www.airops.com/report/influence-of-retrieval-fanout-and-google-serps-in-chatgpt)
22. **74%** of ChatGPT citations go to sites with a domain authority under 80. [AirOps, March 2026](https://www.airops.com/report/influence-of-retrieval-fanout-and-google-serps-in-chatgpt)
23. SEO link metrics such as backlinks and authority score account for only about **4%** of citations. Profound, December 2025
24. **28.3%** of ChatGPT’s 1,000 most-cited pages have zero organic keywords in Google. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
25. Only **32.3%** of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages are content types brands can influence, such as blogs, reviews and news. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
26. Across 75,000 brands, YouTube mentions correlate more strongly with AI brand visibility (about **0.737**) than any other factor. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
27. **99%** of Gemini and ChatGPT prompts cite earned media. [Bottled Imagination, BrightonSEO October 2025](https://bottledimagination.com/insights-and-work/ai-seo-pr-study/)
28. **60%** of Gemini prompts cite industry-related media and **42%** cite “best of” lists. [Bottled Imagination, BrightonSEO October 2025](https://bottledimagination.com/insights-and-work/ai-seo-pr-study/)
29. **30%** of Gemini prompts cite national media, versus only **6%** of ChatGPT prompts. [Bottled Imagination, BrightonSEO October 2025](https://bottledimagination.com/insights-and-work/ai-seo-pr-study/)
30. **90%** of ChatGPT citations are not in Google’s top 20. For Perplexity it is **50%**, for Google AI Overviews **60%** and for Gemini **70%**. [Semrush, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/apwarden_ai-in-seo-myth-vs-reality-ugcPost-7352991660043104256-6ydo/)
31. There is only a **10%** overlap between URLs ranking in Google and URLs cited in ChatGPT. [Profound, February 2025](https://www.tryprofound.com/guides/the-surprising-gap-between-chatgpt-and-google)
32. On domain level, there is only an **11%** overlap of citations between ChatGPT and Perplexity. [Profound, July 2025](https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/citation-overlap-strategy)
33. Pages ranking number 1 in Google are cited **3.5x** more by ChatGPT than pages outside the top 20. [AirOps, March 2026](https://www.airops.com/report/influence-of-retrieval-fanout-and-google-serps-in-chatgpt)
34. The overlap of organic ranking in Google and citation is **38%** for Perplexity and **34%** for ChatGPT. For mentions it is **9%** and **15%**. [Semrush, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marcustober_ai-stealing-your-content-activity-7355584935035904000-awNh)
35. For B2B brands, comparing the top 100 mentions and the top 100 sources, only **8%** of brands appear in both on Google AI Mode, **7%** on Perplexity and **13%** on ChatGPT. [Semrush, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marcustober_ai-stealing-your-content-activity-7355584935035904000-awNh)
36. For B2C brands, comparing the top 100 mentions and the top 100 sources, only **8%** of brands appear in both on Google AI Mode, **8%** on Perplexity and **9%** on ChatGPT. [Semrush, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marcustober_ai-stealing-your-content-activity-7355584935035904000-awNh)
37. **82%** of citations on commercial prompts are third-party sources. [NP Digital, September 2026](https://neilpatel.com/blog/ai-visibility-myths-data/)
38. Only **3%** of citations on commercial prompts are owned sources. [NP Digital, September 2026](https://neilpatel.com/blog/ai-visibility-myths-data/)
39. Reviews and UGC sites account for **29%** of the sources ChatGPT cites. [Similarweb, 2026](https://static.poder360.com.br/uploads/2026/08/attachment-2026-generative-ai-landscape-evolution-ai-search.pdf)
40. News and publisher sites account for **26%** of the sources ChatGPT cites. [Similarweb, 2026](https://static.poder360.com.br/uploads/2026/08/attachment-2026-generative-ai-landscape-evolution-ai-search.pdf)
41. Social media accounts for **5%** of the sources ChatGPT cites. [Similarweb, 2026](https://static.poder360.com.br/uploads/2026/08/attachment-2026-generative-ai-landscape-evolution-ai-search.pdf)
42. Marketplaces account for **5%** of the sources ChatGPT cites. [Similarweb, 2026](https://static.poder360.com.br/uploads/2026/08/attachment-2026-generative-ai-landscape-evolution-ai-search.pdf)
43. News and publisher sites account for **24%** of the sources Google AI Mode cites. [Similarweb, 2026](https://static.poder360.com.br/uploads/2026/08/attachment-2026-generative-ai-landscape-evolution-ai-search.pdf)
44. Reviews and UGC sites account for **20%** of the sources Google AI Mode cites. [Similarweb, 2026](https://static.poder360.com.br/uploads/2026/08/attachment-2026-generative-ai-landscape-evolution-ai-search.pdf)
45. Social media accounts for **11%** of the sources Google AI Mode cites. [Similarweb, 2026](https://static.poder360.com.br/uploads/2026/08/attachment-2026-generative-ai-landscape-evolution-ai-search.pdf)
46. Social media is cited **2.4x** more often by Google AI Mode than by ChatGPT. [Similarweb, 2026](https://static.poder360.com.br/uploads/2026/08/attachment-2026-generative-ai-landscape-evolution-ai-search.pdf)
47. Publishers with an OpenAI deal receive **48%** more citations. Otterly.AI, August 2026
48. Trade media beats mainstream media in 15 of 16 industries. [Otterly.AI, August 2026](https://otterly.ai/blog/ai-news-licensing-deals/)
49. Trustpilot’s citation share rises from **2%** at awareness to **24%** at intent. Seer Interactive, May 2026
50. **1 in 9** domains ChatGPT cites as a source was registered in the last 10 months. [Dmytro Sokhach, October 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dmytro-sokhach-b13aaa75_now-its-clear-why-ai-platforms-are-threatening-share-7516063570632175617-JnJU/)

## How fresh cited content has to be

1. **89.7%** of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages were last updated in 2025. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
2. **95%** of ChatGPT citations come from content updated in the last 10 months. [Semrush, October 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lilygrozeva_i-just-saw-a-stat-from-semrush-that-honestly-activity-7380848047020376064-u1Ii/)
3. **50%** of content cited by LLMs is less than 13 weeks old, and **75%** is less than 16 weeks old. Profound, December 2025
4. **50%** of media sources used in Gemini were from 2024 onwards. For ChatGPT it was **40%**. [Bottled Imagination, BrightonSEO October 2025](https://bottledimagination.com/insights-and-work/ai-seo-pr-study/)
5. **50%** of Perplexity citations are from 2025. [Seer Interactive, July 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7356354779456933889/)
6. **88%** of Google AI Overview citations for YouTube videos are recent. [Profound, December 2025](https://speakerdeck.com/joshbly/we-analyzed-250-million-ai-search-results-heres-what-i-found)
7. Refreshed content is **3x** more likely to be cited by LLMs. AirOps via Brainlabs AI Report 2026
8. ChatGPT cites Wikipedia articles and PDF files up to 6 months after they have been deleted. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), September 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_chatgpt-uses-bing-that-is-what-i-read-on-activity-7501645555207598081-T1Af)
9. ChatGPT kept citing a deleted Wikipedia article for 4 months after deletion with no drop in citation frequency. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_chatgpt-regularly-cites-deleted-wikipedia-activity-7438573915792171008-3ll5)
10. **11%** of the PDFs cited in AI answers are already dead. [Otterly.AI, July 2026](https://otterly.ai/blog/dead-citations-study/)
11. Removed URLs still hold a **5%** citation share eight months later. [Otterly.AI, July 2026](https://otterly.ai/blog/geo-experiment-dead-citations/)
12. Owned pages last **3x** to **9x** longer than other cited pages. NP Digital, September 2026

## Reddit in AI search

1. Reddit’s share of all ChatGPT citations jumped from **2.6%** to more than **11%** in the week of 8 May 2026. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), May 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-become-top-source-chatgpt-recycled-reddit-content-malte-landwehr-vtxme)
2. Reddit grew **4x** to **5x** as a retrieved AI Overview source for B2B SaaS prompts in early 2026. YouTube grew **2x** from an already high base. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), April 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2043718221635760277)
3. Reddit appears in **10.5%** of all Grok chats, and 9 out of 10 of those appearances are site:reddit.com searches. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/patterns-we-see-in-chatgpt-query-fanouts)
4. Across seven industries, the strongest predictor of a Reddit thread being cited by AI is a title that reads like the question: short, around 7 words, and phrased as a question. Textbroker and Rankscale webinar, July 2026
5. Reddit threads posted in the relevant subreddit take **46%** of AI citations. Comparable threads take **27%**. Textbroker and Rankscale webinar, July 2026
6. **82%** of AI-cited Reddit threads are text-post discussions with 10 to 50 comments and about a dozen participants. For comparable threads it is **45%**. Textbroker and Rankscale webinar, July 2026
7. In AI-cited Reddit threads, the top reply is upvoted **1.2x** the post’s own score, versus **0.5x** in comparable threads. It is the strongest single-thread signal. Textbroker and Rankscale webinar, July 2026
8. The median AI-cited Reddit thread has about 9 upvotes, within a range of 5 to 15 across every industry. Textbroker and Rankscale webinar, July 2026
9. AI-cited Reddit threads are typically 13 to 27 months old, and the oldest still-cited thread was **4.8** years old. Textbroker and Rankscale webinar, July 2026
10. GummySearch, a site recycling Reddit content, powers **0.1%** of all citations in ChatGPT. Before 8 May 2026 it accounted for less than **0.005%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), May 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-become-top-source-chatgpt-recycled-reddit-content-malte-landwehr-vtxme)
11. GummySearch was shut down at **$35**k MRR after failing to negotiate a Reddit API deal. [Fed Folio, GummySearch founder, May 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-become-top-source-chatgpt-recycled-reddit-content-malte-landwehr-vtxme)
12. **23%** of consumers self-report Reddit as a shopping source. Near Media and Relativo, September 2026

## Machine-translated Reddit pages

1. **5.71%** of Reddit citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode and Gemini pointed to machine-translated Reddit pages between March and June 2026. [Peec AI, 64.77 million Reddit citations across 20 countries, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
2. ChatGPT’s translated Reddit citation share collapsed from **6.14%** in April 2026 to **0.66%** in May 2026 and **0.30%** in early June 2026. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
3. ChatGPT’s translated Reddit citation share in Germany fell from **18.06%** in April 2026 to **1.54%** in May 2026. In Sweden it fell from **20.51%** to **1.62%**. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
4. Google AI Overview served machine-translated URLs in roughly **8%** to **11%** of its Reddit citations between March and June 2026. Google AI Mode served them in roughly **10%** to **14%**. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
5. Just under **1%** of Gemini’s Reddit citations point to machine-translated pages in most months. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
6. Perplexity never cited a single machine-translated Reddit URL between 1 March and 10 June 2026. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
7. Translated Reddit citations stay under **1%** of Reddit citations in English-speaking markets but run between **24%** and **42%** in non-English markets. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
8. Between **40%** and **73%** of Reddit citations in Google’s AI answers in non-English markets point to machine-translated English threads. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
9. In Sweden, **71.6%** of Google AI Overview’s, **65.4%** of Google AI Mode’s and **10.1%** of ChatGPT’s Reddit citations point to machine-translated pages. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
10. In Norway, **73.0%** of Google AI Overview’s, **59.3%** of Google AI Mode’s and **12.4%** of ChatGPT’s Reddit citations point to machine-translated pages. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
11. In Poland, **71.7%** of Google AI Overview’s, **54.9%** of Google AI Mode’s and **9.0%** of ChatGPT’s Reddit citations point to machine-translated pages. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
12. In Spain, **68.4%** of Google AI Overview’s, **61.2%** of Google AI Mode’s and **7.1%** of ChatGPT’s Reddit citations point to machine-translated pages. Google AI Mode’s Spanish share hit **72%** in early June 2026. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
13. In Italy, **65.4%** of Google AI Overview’s, **53.5%** of Google AI Mode’s and **9.1%** of ChatGPT’s Reddit citations point to machine-translated pages. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
14. In Brazil, **57.2%** of Google AI Overview’s, **47.8%** of Google AI Mode’s and **17.6%** of ChatGPT’s Reddit citations point to machine-translated pages. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
15. In Mexico, **54.5%** of Google AI Overview’s, **56.6%** of Google AI Mode’s and **11.5%** of ChatGPT’s Reddit citations point to machine-translated pages. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
16. In Germany, **52.2%** of Google AI Overview’s, **40.7%** of Google AI Mode’s and **7.3%** of ChatGPT’s Reddit citations point to machine-translated pages. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
17. Gemini’s translated Reddit citation share is **6.1%** in Germany and **26.1%** in Mexico. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)
18. Among translated Reddit citations served for German-market prompts, German daily life topics account for **16.9%**, bags and fashion **13.0%**, tech hardware **12.7%**, audio and smart home **11.6%**, gaming **10.7%**, automotive and EVs **9.6%**, and business and SaaS **9.5%**. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/reddit-machine-translated-pages-ai-visibility)

## Which content formats get cited

1. **52%** of AI citations are made up of just 3 content formats: listicles at **22%**, articles at **17%** and product pages at **14%**. [Peec AI and Wix, 1 million+ citations, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_you-need-more-than-one-content-format-to-activity-7441927481541971968-z9BV)
2. Articles dominate informational prompts with **45%** of AI citations. [Peec AI and Wix, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_you-need-more-than-one-content-format-to-activity-7441927481541971968-z9BV)
3. For transactional prompts, category pages get **15%** of AI citations and the homepage **7%**. [Peec AI and Wix, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_you-need-more-than-one-content-format-to-activity-7441927481541971968-z9BV)
4. The professional services industry has the highest share of self-promotional listicles in AI citations at **19%**. [Peec AI and Wix, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_you-need-more-than-one-content-format-to-activity-7441927481541971968-z9BV)
5. Health and wellness AI citations are dominated by articles at **20%**. [Peec AI and Wix, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_you-need-more-than-one-content-format-to-activity-7441927481541971968-z9BV)
6. **41%** of commercial prompts cite listicles. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://www.wix.com/studio/ai-search-lab/research/content-types-most-cited-by-llms)
7. **25%** of transactional prompts cite product pages. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://www.wix.com/studio/ai-search-lab/research/content-types-most-cited-by-llms)
8. Blogs and listicles make up **61%** of citations. [Profound, December 2025](https://speakerdeck.com/joshbly/we-analyzed-250-million-ai-search-results-heres-what-i-found)
9. **33%** of LLM citations feature comparative listicle content. Profound, pre July 2025
10. “Best X” blog lists make up **43.8%** of ChatGPT source URLs for top-of-funnel queries. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
11. Comparison tables overperform in AI search: they account for **10%** to **12%** of Google AI Mode citations versus **8%** in classic search. [Internetwarriors GEO Study 2026](https://internetwarriors.de/geo/geo-studie-2026)
12. Natural language URLs get **11.4%** more citations. [Profound, December 2025](https://speakerdeck.com/joshbly/we-analyzed-250-million-ai-search-results-heres-what-i-found)
13. **87%** of pages cited by ChatGPT have exactly one h1, versus **64%** of pages ranking in Google. [AirOps, August 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexhalliday_in-our-latest-airops-study-we-analyzed-%F0%9D%9F%AD%F0%9D%9F%AE%F0%9D%9F%AC%F0%9D%9F%AC%F0%9D%9F%AC-activity-7351975056937263106-6PG2/)
14. **78%** of pages cited by ChatGPT contain at least one list, versus **27%** of pages ranking in Google. [AirOps, August 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexhalliday_in-our-latest-airops-study-we-analyzed-%F0%9D%9F%AD%F0%9D%9F%AE%F0%9D%9F%AC%F0%9D%9F%AC%F0%9D%9F%AC-activity-7351975056937263106-6PG2/)
15. **69%** of pages cited by ChatGPT use proper h1, h2 and h3 headings, versus **24%** of pages ranking in Google. [AirOps, August 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexhalliday_in-our-latest-airops-study-we-analyzed-%F0%9D%9F%AD%F0%9D%9F%AE%F0%9D%9F%AC%F0%9D%9F%AC%F0%9D%9F%AC-activity-7351975056937263106-6PG2/)
16. **61%** of pages cited by ChatGPT have rich schema, versus **25%** of pages ranking in Google. [AirOps, August 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexhalliday_in-our-latest-airops-study-we-analyzed-%F0%9D%9F%AD%F0%9D%9F%AE%F0%9D%9F%AC%F0%9D%9F%AC%F0%9D%9F%AC-activity-7351975056937263106-6PG2/)
17. ChatGPT pages with strong title-query overlap are cited at **2.2x** the rate of low-overlap pages. [AirOps, March 2026](https://www.airops.com/report/influence-of-retrieval-fanout-and-google-serps-in-chatgpt)
18. All 24 of the most-cited LinkedIn articles use bullet or numbered lists. [Meltwater, May 2026](https://learn.meltwater.com/rs/814-WJU-189/images/2026%20Meltwater%20report%20-%20How%20LinkedIn%20Content%20Wins%20AI%20Search.pdf?version=0)
19. **92%** of the most-cited LinkedIn articles use clear h2 or h3 headings. [Meltwater, May 2026](https://learn.meltwater.com/rs/814-WJU-189/images/2026%20Meltwater%20report%20-%20How%20LinkedIn%20Content%20Wins%20AI%20Search.pdf?version=0)
20. **75%** of the most-cited LinkedIn articles name specific companies or tools. [Meltwater, May 2026](https://learn.meltwater.com/rs/814-WJU-189/images/2026%20Meltwater%20report%20-%20How%20LinkedIn%20Content%20Wins%20AI%20Search.pdf?version=0)
21. **67%** of the most-cited LinkedIn articles include hard numbers. [Meltwater, May 2026](https://learn.meltwater.com/rs/814-WJU-189/images/2026%20Meltwater%20report%20-%20How%20LinkedIn%20Content%20Wins%20AI%20Search.pdf?version=0)
22. **50%** of the most-cited LinkedIn articles use a comparison framework. [Meltwater, May 2026](https://learn.meltwater.com/rs/814-WJU-189/images/2026%20Meltwater%20report%20-%20How%20LinkedIn%20Content%20Wins%20AI%20Search.pdf?version=0)
23. **33%** of the most-cited LinkedIn articles include a “how to choose” guide. [Meltwater, May 2026](https://learn.meltwater.com/rs/814-WJU-189/images/2026%20Meltwater%20report%20-%20How%20LinkedIn%20Content%20Wins%20AI%20Search.pdf?version=0)
24. **25%** of the most-cited LinkedIn articles include the year in the title. [Meltwater, May 2026](https://learn.meltwater.com/rs/814-WJU-189/images/2026%20Meltwater%20report%20-%20How%20LinkedIn%20Content%20Wins%20AI%20Search.pdf?version=0)

## Citation rates: a winner-take-most distribution

1. **31%** of URLs have a ChatGPT citation rate of **2.0** or higher, and those URLs account for **59%** of all ChatGPT citations. [Peec AI, 1 million+ citations, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/citation-rate-benckmarks-from-over-1-million-citations)
2. More than 9 out of 10 URLs cited by Google AI Mode have a citation rate below **1.0**. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/citation-rate-benckmarks-from-over-1-million-citations)
3. **3%** of URLs in Google AI Mode have a citation rate between **1.0** and **1.5**, and they account for **12%** of Google AI Mode citations. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/citation-rate-benckmarks-from-over-1-million-citations)
4. **64%** of URLs retrieved by Perplexity are never cited in its answers. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/citation-rate-benckmarks-from-over-1-million-citations)
5. **6%** of URLs have a Perplexity citation rate of **2.0** or higher, and they account for just under half of all Perplexity citations. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/citation-rate-benckmarks-from-over-1-million-citations)
6. Around **10%** to **11%** of URLs for informational and commercial prompts reach a citation rate of **2.0** or higher, and they account for **37%** of all citations. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/citation-rate-benckmarks-from-over-1-million-citations)
7. Listicles make up just under one fifth of all URLs cited by ChatGPT, yet **52%** of them are cited more than twice per ChatGPT answer. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/citation-rate-benckmarks-from-over-1-million-citations)
8. Category pages are Google AI Mode’s top-performing content type, with just under **10%** reaching the high citation rate bucket. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/citation-rate-benckmarks-from-over-1-million-citations)
9. **85%** of pages retrieved by ChatGPT never get cited. Only **15%** do. [AirOps, March 2026](https://www.airops.com/report/influence-of-retrieval-fanout-and-google-serps-in-chatgpt)
10. ChatGPT cites roughly **50%** of the URLs it retrieves. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
11. When Ahrefs is mentioned in AI responses, a link is included only **28%** of the time. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
12. Up to **75%** of AI answers that cite a brand’s pages never name the brand. [NP Digital, September 2026](https://neilpatel.com/blog/ai-visibility-myths-data/)

## The listicle economy

1. A rank 1 placement in a frequently AI-cited third-party listicle is associated with a **16.5 percentage point** visibility lift in AI answers for B2B SaaS brands. [Peec AI, nearly 200,000 AI responses across 8 engines, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/the-listicle-rank-effect-what-nearly-200-000-ai-responses-across-8-ai-engines-reveal-about-brand-visibility)
2. A rank 1 listicle placement is associated with a **13.4 percentage point** visibility lift for emerging MarTech brands. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/the-listicle-rank-effect-what-nearly-200-000-ai-responses-across-8-ai-engines-reveal-about-brand-visibility)
3. A rank 1 listicle placement is associated with US Finance brands appearing **1.80** positions earlier in AI answers, B2B SaaS brands **1.17** positions earlier and emerging MarTech brands **0.82** positions earlier. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/the-listicle-rank-effect-what-nearly-200-000-ai-responses-across-8-ai-engines-reveal-about-brand-visibility)
4. A rank 1 listicle placement is associated with **0.67** additional brand mentions per AI answer for emerging MarTech brands and **0.43** for B2B SaaS brands. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/the-listicle-rank-effect-what-nearly-200-000-ai-responses-across-8-ai-engines-reveal-about-brand-visibility)
5. Self-promotional listicles account for about **11%** of citations in AI search results for software review prompts. [Peec AI, 232,000 citations, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/self-promotional-listicles-analysis-from-232k-citations)
6. ChatGPT’s average self-promotional listicle citation rate in software review prompts is **3.6%**, versus **10.3%** for Google AI Mode and **10.4%** for Perplexity. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/self-promotional-listicles-analysis-from-232k-citations)
7. Self-promotional listicle citation rates in AI search reached **11%** to **14%** in December 2025 and January 2026. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/self-promotional-listicles-analysis-from-232k-citations)
8. ChatGPT’s self-promotional listicle citation rate stayed between **3%** and **5%** from December 2025 to February 2026, and Perplexity’s between **10%** and **12%**. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/self-promotional-listicles-analysis-from-232k-citations)
9. ChatGPT drew **7.8%** of its software review citations from educational and training sites, versus **3.6%** for Perplexity and **2.5%** for Google AI Mode. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/self-promotional-listicles-analysis-from-232k-citations)
10. Zapier accounts for about **1%** of URLs cited by ChatGPT in software review prompts, but about **8%** of URLs cited by other AI platforms. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/self-promotional-listicles-analysis-from-232k-citations)
11. The listicle share of AI Overview sources for B2B SaaS prompts fell from **44%** in October 2025 to **39%** in April 2026, a constant decrease of **0.5%** to **1%** per month. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), April 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2043718221635760277)
12. Brands ranking themselves number 1 in their own listicle get cited but not recommended by AI about **69%** of the time. [Lily Ray, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/future-of-ai-shopping)
13. A made-up matcha powder brand with no website and no social media presence started appearing in LLM answers after being placed at position 2 in 3 external listicles. [Claneo, August 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2089238327228608577)

## Query fan-outs: what engines really search for

1. The average word count of ChatGPT query fan-outs roughly doubled between October 2025 and January 2026, from about 6 words to about 12 words. [Peec AI, 20 million+ fan-outs, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/country-analysis-20-million-search-qfos)
2. Average ChatGPT query fan-out length peaked at about 16 words around calendar week 49 of 2025. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/country-analysis-20-million-search-qfos)
3. In the first week of October 2025, ChatGPT issued between **2.4** and **2.8** query fan-outs per prompt across five analysed countries. In the final week of January 2026 it was **2.3** to **2.8**. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/country-analysis-20-million-search-qfos)
4. ChatGPT generates an average of **2.1** query fan-outs per prompt, Perplexity’s Sonar model **1.4**, and Grok **6.8**. [Peec AI, 5 million fan-outs, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/patterns-we-see-in-chatgpt-query-fanouts)
5. “Best” is the word ChatGPT most often adds to its query fan-outs. “Reviews” is the third most frequently injected word. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/patterns-we-see-in-chatgpt-query-fanouts)
6. ChatGPT injects the word “best” into **24.3%** of query fan-outs for advice-style prompts. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/patterns-we-see-in-chatgpt-query-fanouts)
7. ChatGPT adds the current year to its fan-out queries in **5.44%** of prompts. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/patterns-we-see-in-chatgpt-query-fanouts)
8. Grok uses the site: operator in its fan-out searches in **18.3%** of all Grok chats. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/patterns-we-see-in-chatgpt-query-fanouts)
9. **100%** of Wirecutter and Consumer Reports appearances in Grok fan-outs are injected by Grok rather than present in the user prompt. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/patterns-we-see-in-chatgpt-query-fanouts)
10. **94%** of ChatGPT’s fan-out queries for trending news prompts contain “2026”, even though only **1%** of the prompts contain a direct reference to 2026. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_every-single-day-i-ask-chatgpt-questions-activity-7490311820524838913-3nVG)
11. Grok injects one brand into fan-out queries for **20%** of US ecommerce prompts, ChatGPT for **5%** and Perplexity for **2%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), April 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2044836827874337205)
12. Grok injects 2 to 5 brands into fan-out queries for **13%** of US ecommerce prompts, ChatGPT for **8%** and Perplexity for **0%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), April 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2044836827874337205)
13. In **13%** of checked cases, ChatGPT injects brand names into shopping fan-out queries even when the original prompt mentioned no brands. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/future-of-ai-shopping)
14. 78 of the 183 web searches GPT-**5.6** started across 75 chats about one startup used the site: operator. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-stumbled-upon-a-potential-vulnerability-activity-7489295537318473729-oApx)
15. ChatGPT retrieves 37 pages per fan-out query. [AirOps, March 2026](https://www.airops.com/report/influence-of-retrieval-fanout-and-google-serps-in-chatgpt)
16. **33%** of pages cited by ChatGPT appear only in the SERPs for a fan-out query, not in the SERP for the original prompt. [AirOps, March 2026](https://www.airops.com/report/influence-of-retrieval-fanout-and-google-serps-in-chatgpt)
17. **95%** of ChatGPT’s fan-out queries have zero monthly search volume. [AirOps, March 2026](https://www.airops.com/report/influence-of-retrieval-fanout-and-google-serps-in-chatgpt)
18. ChatGPT query fan-outs at domain level overlap **39%** with Google SERPs. With Bing it is below **10%**. [Profound, December 2025](https://speakerdeck.com/joshbly/we-analyzed-250-million-ai-search-results-heres-what-i-found)
19. **89%** of prompts generate 2 to 3 fan-out queries. [Profound, December 2025](https://speakerdeck.com/joshbly/we-analyzed-250-million-ai-search-results-heres-what-i-found)
20. ChatGPT uses **2.17** fan-out queries on average, within a range of 1 to 4. [Nectiv Digital, October 2025](https://nectivdigital.com/new-data-study-what-queries-is-chatgpt-using-behind-the-scenes/)
21. ChatGPT fan-out queries have an average length of **5.48** words, a range of 2 to 12 words, and **77%** are 5 words or longer. [Nectiv Digital, October 2025](https://nectivdigital.com/new-data-study-what-queries-is-chatgpt-using-behind-the-scenes/)
22. The most common terms in ChatGPT fan-out queries are reviews, 2025, free, features and comparison. [Nectiv Digital, October 2025](https://nectivdigital.com/new-data-study-what-queries-is-chatgpt-using-behind-the-scenes/)
23. ChatGPT averages **7.6** fan-out queries per prompt. [Nectiv, September 2026](https://nectivdigital.com/blog/chatgpt-tripled-fan-out-queries-data-study)
24. Gemini averages **4.5** fan-out queries per prompt. Nectiv, September 2026
25. ChatGPT uses roughly **80%** more fan-out queries than Gemini. Nectiv, September 2026
26. Gemini **3.5** uses **50%** fewer fan-out queries than Gemini **3.0**. Nectiv, September 2026
27. ChatGPT uses the site: operator in **65%** of its searches. Nectiv, September 2026

## AI search still runs on the English web

1. **43%** of ChatGPT query fan-outs for non-English prompts are performed in English. [Peec AI, 10 million+ searches, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-searches-in-english-even-when-you-don-t)
2. ChatGPT supplements non-English queries with additional English-language research in nearly **78%** of cases. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-searches-in-english-even-when-you-don-t)
3. Turkish-language ChatGPT queries include English-language research **94%** of the time. Spanish-language queries **66%** of the time. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-searches-in-english-even-when-you-don-t)
4. No non-English language falls below a **60%** rate of English-language research in ChatGPT. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-searches-in-english-even-when-you-don-t)
5. Fan-out behaviour is virtually identical across all countries and languages, showing that algorithm changes roll out globally rather than regionally. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/country-analysis-20-million-search-qfos)

## Inside ChatGPT’s retrieval stack

1. ChatGPT’s own retrieval index, Labrador, is not a single index but a family of vertical indexes covering web, PDF, YouTube, news, arXiv, Wikipedia, local, finance, legal, medical, shopping and images. [Peec AI (Tomek Rudzki), September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
2. Between 21 May and 21 July 2026, ChatGPT’s server-sent events exposed a result\\\_source field carrying only four values: Labrador (OpenAI’s own index), Bright, Oxylabs and SERP. [Peec AI (Tomek Rudzki), September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
3. On top of its own crawler, ChatGPT retrieves from at least eight outside providers. [Peec AI (Tomek Rudzki), September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
4. In mid-August 2026, ChatGPT’s “prefer-index-over-serp-v3” A/B test, which serves results from OpenAI’s own index instead of scraped search results, affected **8%** of chats. [Peec AI (Tomek Rudzki), September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
5. As of 2 September 2026, ChatGPT was running at least five separate shopping ranking experiments, two of them on OpenAI’s own index. [Peec AI (Tomek Rudzki), September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
6. ChatGPT’s shopping ranking stack reranks a pool of 400 candidate products and narrows the field to 10 sources with a BM25 lexical component. [Peec AI (Tomek Rudzki), September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
7. ChatGPT’s shopping retrieval runs approximate nearest neighbor vector search at two dimensions, 12,288 and 4,096. [Peec AI (Tomek Rudzki), September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
8. ChatGPT had crawled **6 million** pages of a one-billion-page test website by early September 2026, at a rate of 35,000 requests per hour. [Peec AI (Metehan Yesilyurt), September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
9. OpenAI began building its own search index in 2023, aiming to answer **80%** of queries from it by the end of that year. [Nick Turley (OpenAI) in US v. Google testimony, September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
10. Even with full access to Google’s index data, OpenAI would need at least five years just to determine whether answering **100%** of queries from its own index is achievable. [Nick Turley (OpenAI) in US v. Google testimony, September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
11. **58%** of pages take longer than **0.8** seconds to load, while Microsoft’s Web IQ grounding platform advertises sub-165ms P95 latency. [HTTP Archive Web Almanac and Microsoft, via Peec AI, September 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index)
12. The reranker BGE-reranker-large puts roughly **24%** of its attention on punctuation and special tokens for a typical passage. [Peec AI (Metehan Yesilyurt), August 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/rerankers-for-geo-aeo-how-ai-search-chooses-passages-and-sources)
13. The reranker ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2 scores a descriptive product passage at **0.0019%** and a direct shortlist passage above **99.9%** for the same best-tools query. [Peec AI (Metehan Yesilyurt), August 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/rerankers-for-geo-aeo-how-ai-search-chooses-passages-and-sources)
14. You can forcibly refresh ChatGPT’s cache of a URL by requesting the content of the URL manually: set external web access to FALSE in the API and ChatGPT will update the cache with the new content. Profound, December 2025

## API versus user interface: the same prompts, different answers

1. Comparing the same prompts in the ChatGPT user interface and the ChatGPT API, the average brand’s visibility changes by **41%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/api-vs-ui-how-track-llm-visibility-malte-landwehr-foqke)
2. The most visible brand in the ChatGPT user interface does not make the top 3 in the ChatGPT API for the same prompts. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/api-vs-ui-how-track-llm-visibility-malte-landwehr-foqke)
3. The ChatGPT API produces at most 7 fan-out queries per prompt. The ChatGPT user interface produces up to 20. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/api-vs-ui-how-track-llm-visibility-malte-landwehr-foqke)
4. The share of UGC sources cited drops from **2%** in the ChatGPT user interface to **0%** in the ChatGPT API. Editorial sources drop from **5%** to **1%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/api-vs-ui-how-track-llm-visibility-malte-landwehr-foqke)
5. Competitor domains are cited in **52%** of ChatGPT API answers and in **38%** of ChatGPT user interface answers. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/api-vs-ui-how-track-llm-visibility-malte-landwehr-foqke)
6. Two of the top 25 source domains in the ChatGPT user interface do not appear among the top 100 sources in the ChatGPT API. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/api-vs-ui-how-track-llm-visibility-malte-landwehr-foqke)
7. Listicles fall from **25%** of cited pages in the ChatGPT user interface to **4%** in the ChatGPT API. Comparison pages fall from **18%** to **2%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/api-vs-ui-how-track-llm-visibility-malte-landwehr-foqke)
8. Product pages and how-to guides grow from **34%** of cited pages in the ChatGPT user interface to **63%** in the ChatGPT API. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/api-vs-ui-how-track-llm-visibility-malte-landwehr-foqke)
9. ChatGPT API answers are **31%** longer than ChatGPT user interface answers. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/api-vs-ui-how-track-llm-visibility-malte-landwehr-foqke)

## How AI agents actually read your site

1. In ChatGPT Deep Research sessions, a successful in-page find command triggers a re-read whose window contains the matched line **95%** of the time. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
2. On pages with under 20 links, about **78%** of ChatGPT Deep Research’s first read is real content. On pages with 20 to 59 links it is **55%**, and on pages with 60 or more links only **33%**. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
3. A typical ChatGPT Deep Research first read contains around 50 link markers. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
4. Each ChatGPT Deep Research page open returns a capped window of roughly 5,000 to 6,000 characters. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
5. The first open of a page returns a median of about 5,700 characters to ChatGPT Deep Research. A re-read returns about 6,200. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
6. A successful find command returns a median of about 435 characters to ChatGPT Deep Research. A missed find returns only about 49. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
7. After a find miss, ChatGPT Deep Research tries a different keyword about **60%** of the time and abandons the page for a fresh Bing query roughly a quarter of the time. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
8. About one in five ChatGPT Deep Research re-reads is a plain continuation without a keyword trigger. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
9. Bing snippets shown to ChatGPT Deep Research cap at about 285 characters per result, with a median of about 250. A full Bing result list has a median of about 740 characters per search. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
10. ChatGPT Deep Research sets topn as high as 10 results on opening exploratory queries, uses topn=3 as its steady-state default, and drops to topn=2 when verifying a fact it already expects to confirm. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
11. ChatGPT Deep Research used the click command zero times across all logged sessions. [Peec AI, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal)
12. **28%** of first clicks by ChatGPT Deep Research and Agent Mode go to the position 1 ranked source per fan-out query. [Peec AI (David Konitzny), July 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_did-you-know-chatgpt-has-a-hidden-ctr-curve-activity-7478782872829546497-ffXJ)
13. The agentic CTR curve in ChatGPT declines from **28%** at position 1 to **18%** at position 2, **12%** at position 3 and **4%** at position 10. [Peec AI (David Konitzny), July 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_did-you-know-chatgpt-has-a-hidden-ctr-curve-activity-7478782872829546497-ffXJ)

## Crawlers, rendering and technical GEO

1. Crawlers that render JavaScript include Google, Bing, Yandex, Naver, Baidu, Apple, adidx, ClaudeBot, Meta-ExternalAgents, MistralAI-User, Bytespider and DuckAssistBot. Merj, Tech SEO Connect, December 2025
2. Crawlers that do NOT render JavaScript include CCBot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User. Merj, Tech SEO Connect, December 2025
3. In an experiment with 8 test scenarios, none of the 5 tested AI systems (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode) extracted JSON-LD schema markup during a direct live fetch, even when the information was visible nowhere else on the page. [searchVIU, December 2025](https://www.searchviu.com/en/schema-markup-and-ai-in-2025-what-chatgpt-claude-perplexity-gemini-really-see/)
4. Gemini was the only AI system to render JavaScript during a live fetch, finding 4 of 8 hidden product prices, the best result of the 5 systems tested. [searchVIU, December 2025](https://www.searchviu.com/en/schema-markup-and-ai-in-2025-what-chatgpt-claude-perplexity-gemini-really-see/)
5. ChatGPT found 3 of 8 hidden product prices (**37.5%**), extracting only prices present in visible HTML. Claude found 0 of 8. [searchVIU, December 2025](https://www.searchviu.com/en/schema-markup-and-ai-in-2025-what-chatgpt-claude-perplexity-gemini-really-see/)
6. Perplexity found 0 of 8 hidden product prices before indexing and 1 of 8 after. Google AI Mode found 0 of 8 before indexing and 2 of 8 after, capturing only 3 of 7 products in its index. [searchVIU, December 2025](https://www.searchviu.com/en/schema-markup-and-ai-in-2025-what-chatgpt-claude-perplexity-gemini-really-see/)
7. Hidden Microdata and hidden RDFa prices were recognised by none of the 5 tested AI systems. Visible Microdata and RDFa were read by ChatGPT and Gemini, but not by Claude, Perplexity or Google AI Mode. [searchVIU, December 2025](https://www.searchviu.com/en/schema-markup-and-ai-in-2025-what-chatgpt-claude-perplexity-gemini-really-see/)
8. Replacing JavaScript-dependent rendering with progressive hydration, so critical content is served in HTML, lifted a client’s mention share in AI engines from **57.2%** to **64.5%** and its citation share from **6.8%** to **7.3%**. Brainlabs AI Report 2026
9. Common Crawl contains over 10 petabytes of data and has collected more than **300 billion** web pages since 2008. [Common Crawl, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/why-server-logs-are-crucial-for-ai-search-strategy)
10. Over **80%** of GPT-3’s training data came from a filtered version of Common Crawl. [Common Crawl, June 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/why-server-logs-are-crucial-for-ai-search-strategy)
11. Meta’s meta-webindexer crawler massively increased its crawling across Peec AI-tracked websites in 2026, with peak activity in calendar weeks 23, 26 and 32. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-saw-a-lot-of-rumors-regarding-facebook-activity-7491568702509871104-YeVB)
12. In most weeks, Meta’s meta-webindexer crawls less than Bytespider, Applebot and OAI-SearchBot. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-saw-a-lot-of-rumors-regarding-facebook-activity-7491568702509871104-YeVB)
13. Google has a limit of **400 billion** indexed documents, and after 128 days without crawling a document drops from the index. [OMT Summit 2026, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-spent-the-last-two-days-at-the-omt-summit-activity-7435712742507892736-_ZP4)
14. Google crawls atom feeds easily **30x** more often than XML sitemaps. [Campixx 2026, June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_earlier-this-week-i-attended-the-campixx-activity-7473810609541791744-aiF_)
15. White text on a white background still works as a manipulation technique for ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews and featured snippets. [Claneo, November 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/matthaeus-michalik_wir-haben-ki-systeme-manipuliert-und-es-share-7397163049125847040-3K7n)
16. google.com/goto URLs appear in **0.02%** of AI Overviews sources, **0.01%** in AI Mode, **0.006%** in Claude and **0.004%** in Perplexity. Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok and Mistral never return them. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2085749921810886838)
17. **69%** of AI crawlers cannot execute JavaScript. Vercel and MERJ, September 2026
18. **42%** of JavaScript-rendered content never gets indexed by AI systems. Onely, February 2026

## The llms.txt question

1. llms.txt files account for **0.0001%** of ChatGPT citations and **0.0007%** of GPT-Search-API citations. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_is-chatgpt-finally-citing-the-llmstxt-yes-activity-7494299373816868865-XebZ)
2. With the switch to GPT-**5.6**, the number of .txt and .md files cited by ChatGPT grew **300%**, and the number of llms.txt and llms-full.txt files cited doubled. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_is-chatgpt-finally-citing-the-llmstxt-yes-activity-7494299373816868865-XebZ)
3. Across 8 LLMs, .md files account for **0.013056%** of all citations, .txt files **0.001053%**, .json files **0.000160%**, llms.txt **0.000235%** and llms-full.txt **0.000008%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_is-chatgpt-finally-citing-the-llmstxt-yes-activity-7494299373816868865-XebZ)
4. Perplexity’s llms-full.txt file has more than 7,000 lines and over 30,000 words. [Peec AI, July 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/llms-txt-md-files-important-ai-visibility-helper-or-hoax)
5. More than 10 tools already exist that automatically create an llms.txt file. [Peec AI, July 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/llms-txt-md-files-important-ai-visibility-helper-or-hoax)
6. As of July 2025, not a single LLM-driven search and answer engine had announced support for the llms.txt protocol. [Peec AI, July 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/llms-txt-md-files-important-ai-visibility-helper-or-hoax)

## Local search and maps in AI

1. Prompts containing “near me” trigger a map in ChatGPT **94%** of the time. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-gathered-a-lot-of-local-aeo-data-for-a-activity-7489939581568466944-i9Pd)
2. City-level prompts trigger a map in ChatGPT **48%** of the time, borough-level prompts **59%**, neighbourhood-level prompts **74%**, and prompts naming a specific location **80%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), July 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_the-more-granular-the-location-in-a-prompt-activity-7478488722271989762-RObp)
3. ChatGPT’s map reservation partners are Yelp, OpenTable and Resy. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-gathered-a-lot-of-local-aeo-data-for-a-activity-7489939581568466944-i9Pd)
4. ChatGPT populates its maps with business entries from at least 7 providers, including official partners Yelp and Tripadvisor and Google Maps data via a third-party scraping provider. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-gathered-a-lot-of-local-aeo-data-for-a-activity-7489939581568466944-i9Pd)

## AI shopping and ecommerce

1. **83%** of ChatGPT carousel products are strong matches to products in Google’s top 40 organic shopping results. Only **11%** are strong matches to Bing’s top shopping results. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-ecommerce-managers-can-optimize-chatgpt-product-rankings-step-by-step)
2. **60%** of ChatGPT carousel product matches come from the top 10 Google Shopping organic results, and nearly **84%** from the top 20. Products ranked 21 to 40 account for around **16%**. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-ecommerce-managers-can-optimize-chatgpt-product-rankings-step-by-step)
3. ChatGPT product carousels usually feature 8 products. [Peec AI, March 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-ecommerce-managers-can-optimize-chatgpt-product-rankings-step-by-step)
4. **136 million** ChatGPT product carousels are shown to European consumers every month. [Precis, June 2026](https://www.precis.com/resources/how-chatgpt-shops-what-we-found-why-it-matters-and-what-to-do-about-it)
5. **64%** of the products Amazon’s Rufus AI assistant recommends do not rank in the top 10 of Amazon’s organic search results. [Autopilot and The Order, The Third Shelf](https://www.autopilotbrand.com/thirdshelf)
6. **74%** of shoppers say they trust the product recommendations they receive from AI chat. [Salesforce, Holiday Retail Predictions 2026, July 2026](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/holiday-retail-predictions-2026/)
7. **45%** of consumers planned to use generative AI tools for Black Friday shopping. [BCG, November 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/maximilian-ziche_hey-liebe-cmos-habt-ihr-das-auf-dem-schirm-activity-7394365156077568000-wVZG)
8. **39%** of consumers have used generative AI for online shopping, and **53%** planned to in 2025. [Adobe, March 2025](https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2025/03/17/adobe-analytics-traffic-to-us-retail-websites-from-generative-ai-sources-jumps-1200-percent)
9. **92%** of consumers who use generative AI for shopping say it enhances their experience. [Adobe, March 2025](https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2025/03/17/adobe-analytics-traffic-to-us-retail-websites-from-generative-ai-sources-jumps-1200-percent)
10. **29%** of consumers have used generative AI for travel-related tasks, and **84%** of them say it enhances their experience. **27%** have used it for financial topics. [Adobe, March 2025](https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2025/03/17/adobe-analytics-traffic-to-us-retail-websites-from-generative-ai-sources-jumps-1200-percent)
11. **50%** of ecommerce searches in Google have a product grid. [OMT Summit 2026, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-spent-the-last-two-days-at-the-omt-summit-activity-7435712742507892736-_ZP4)
12. Product grid click uplifts: titles +**54%**, split SEO and SEA product feeds +**60%**, product detail page optimisation +**100%**, images +**115%**, variants and item group ID +**250%**. [OMT Summit 2026, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-spent-the-last-two-days-at-the-omt-summit-activity-7435712742507892736-_ZP4)
13. Optimising product attributes in the product grid lifted revenue **205%**. [OMT Summit 2026, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-spent-the-last-two-days-at-the-omt-summit-activity-7435712742507892736-_ZP4)
14. Google Merchant Center product titles allow 150 characters but only the first 70 are displayed. [OMT Summit 2026, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-spent-the-last-two-days-at-the-omt-summit-activity-7435712742507892736-_ZP4)
15. One of the largest German online shops already gets **10%** of its product detail page SEO traffic from ChatGPT. Campixx 2026, June 2026
16. Over **10%** of **6.8 million** monitored online shops disappeared over a six-month period. [ShopRank, February 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_online-shops-are-dying-shoprank-monitored-activity-7432457601956880384-j1PM)
17. From August 2025 to January 2026, **8%** of Shopify stores and **20%** of WooCommerce stores closed. As of January 2026, **76%** of WooCommerce stores are dead. [ShopRank, February 2026](https://shoprank.com/blog/platform-survival-rates)
18. **40%** of consumers use AI when shopping. [Semrush, September 2026](https://www.marketingsociety.com/think-piece/how-search-and-customer-journeys-are-evolving-ai)
19. **59%** of consumers use AI for product comparisons. [Semrush, September 2026](https://www.marketingsociety.com/think-piece/how-search-and-customer-journeys-are-evolving-ai)
20. **23%** of Google AI Mode queries return products, against **88%** in standard search. [Productrise, July 2026](https://productrise.app/blog/google-ai-mode-shows-fewer-shopping-products)
21. Only **0.8%** of standard-search products also appear in Google AI Mode for the same query on the same day. [Productrise, July 2026](https://productrise.app/blog/google-ai-mode-shows-fewer-shopping-products)
22. Etsy and Walmart process **1 million** to **4 million** daily online transactions across their catalogs through the Agentic Commerce Protocol. Previsible, September 2026
23. **70%** of top ecommerce retailers miss essential schema markup on product detail pages. Re:signal, September 2026
24. **25%** of revenue is predicted to be attributable to agentic commerce by 2030. Re:signal, September 2026
25. AI agents drove **$262 billion** in online sales. Re:signal, September 2026

## Ads inside AI answers

1. **60%** of ChatGPT chats in the USA contained an ad on 13 August 2026, down from **73%** on 22 July 2026. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_chatgpt-ads-in-brazil-and-mexico-spread-very-activity-7493929982268940288-5gXO)
2. The share of ChatGPT chats containing an ad in Brazil rose from **0%** in early August 2026 to a peak of **47%** around 10 August 2026. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_chatgpt-ads-in-brazil-and-mexico-spread-very-activity-7493929982268940288-5gXO)
3. Within 2 weeks of launch, ChatGPT ads in Brazil and Mexico appeared in roughly **35%** to **42%** of chats, matching the levels in Japan and South Korea. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_chatgpt-ads-in-brazil-and-mexico-spread-very-activity-7493929982268940288-5gXO)
4. Through July 2026, ChatGPT ads appeared in about **30%** of chats in South Korea and about **22%** of chats in Japan. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_chatgpt-ads-in-brazil-and-mexico-spread-very-activity-7493929982268940288-5gXO)
5. Almost **50%** of sources used by LLMs can be influenced with affiliate marketing. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_almost-50-of-sources-used-by-llms-can-be-activity-7475895638191247360-kSns)
6. In one insurance niche, over **2%** of LLM sources are paid advertorial placements. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), May 2026](https://www.goldcast.io/blog-post/geo-optimization-for-ai-search)
7. The advertorial share of LLM citations in the German insurance space stayed between **2.2%** and **2.7%** from October 2025 to February 2026. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), February 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_in-late-2024-advertorials-were-the-number-activity-7432110218177736704-T7UG)
8. ChatGPT has about 50,000 advertisers. Similarweb, September 2026
9. ChatGPT ads have a **0.8%** click-through rate. Similarweb Ad Intelligence, September 2026

## AI referral traffic: smaller, but far more valuable

1. From July 2024 to February 2025, traffic from AI search increased **1,200%** for banks, **1,200%** for retail and **1,700%** for travel. [Adobe, March 2025](https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2025/03/17/adobe-analytics-traffic-to-us-retail-websites-from-generative-ai-sources-jumps-1200-percent)
2. Compared to other traffic sources, generative AI traffic has **8%** higher engagement, **12%** more page visits and a **23%** lower bounce rate. [Adobe, March 2025](https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2025/03/17/adobe-analytics-traffic-to-us-retail-websites-from-generative-ai-sources-jumps-1200-percent)
3. Conversion rates to ecommerce websites by channel: ChatGPT **11%**, direct **10%**, paid search **9%**, SEO **5%**, email **5%**, display **4%**, social **4%**. [SimilarWeb, September 2025](https://x.com/Similarweb/status/1967571048343187792)
4. Conversion rate in the US is **6.93%** for ChatGPT traffic versus **5.44%** for Google traffic. [Growth Memo, November 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinindig_chatgpt-vs-google-at-every-stage-of-the-user-activity-7394407350385668096-VpFo/)
5. The average length of a search on Google is **3.2** words. On ChatGPT it is 80. [Growth Memo, November 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinindig_chatgpt-vs-google-at-every-stage-of-the-user-activity-7394407350385668096-VpFo/)
6. The value of a click from an LLM is **4x** higher than a click from organic search. [Precis B2Breakfast 2026, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-am-sitting-at-the-airport-right-now-thinking-activity-7450202215136317440-VGvW)
7. Visitors coming from AI search spend **3x** longer on the website. Lureon 2025 Report
8. Webflow has a **6x** higher conversion rate from ChatGPT than from Google. [Graphite, September 2025](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT7kq-R3Gjc)
9. LLM traffic for some clients converts at up to **20x** the rate of typical SEO traffic. [Peec AI via Search Engine Journal, July 2025](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/win-generative-engine-optimization-peecai-spa/550612/)
10. Clients grow their LLM traffic by **100%** every 2 to 3 months. [Peec AI via Search Engine Journal, July 2025](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/win-generative-engine-optimization-peecai-spa/550612/)
11. ChatGPT traffic is **0.5%** to **2%** of total website visits for most brands. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), May 2026](https://www.goldcast.io/blog-post/geo-optimization-for-ai-search)
12. ChatGPT sends **12 million** clicks per month to websites in Germany, and Idealo captured **2%** of them. [SimilarWeb, August 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-complete-guide-to-generative-engine-optimization-%28geo%29)
13. Idealo was the most visible ecommerce destination in ChatGPT in the first half of 2025, ahead of Amazon and eBay. [SimilarWeb, August 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/the-complete-guide-to-generative-engine-optimization-%28geo%29)
14. When an AI assistant recommends a brand, users are within the following week **182%** more likely to Google the brand, **117%** more likely to visit its website and **185%** more likely to view its product on a retailer’s site. [Kevin White / Scrunch AI, July 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevbosaurus_im-not-going-to-say-attribution-is-dead-share-7479941671036755968-AlY2/)
15. **1%** of all traffic comes from AI or LLM tools. Semrush, Q4 2025
16. Buyers who arrive from AI answers convert at roughly **3x** the rate of other channels. Victorious, September 2026
17. Users visit an AI-recommended brand **2x** to **4x** as often as a competitor that was not recommended. Similarweb, 2026
18. The average Google user spends **15%** less than the average Claude user. Otterly.AI, July 2026

## What public companies report about AI traffic

1. Auto Trader reports **9 million** monthly unique visitors, of which **80%** arrive direct, **13%** via organic search, **4%** via paid and less than **1%** via AI chatbots. [Auto Trader, May 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
2. Expedia reports traffic from new AI experiences is less than **1.5%** of its total traffic. [Expedia, May 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
3. CarGurus reports AI traffic is a low double-digit percentage of its total traffic and growing quickly. [CarGurus, May 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
4. CarGurus reports AI-driven traffic submits leads at nearly **50%** higher rates than traditional SEO traffic. [CarGurus, February 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
5. LegalZoom reports traffic from AI platforms converts at higher rates and shows a higher propensity to upgrade subscriptions than its other traffic sources. [LegalZoom, May 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
6. Etsy reports agentic traffic in Q4 2025 was **15x** higher than the prior year, though it remains a small portion of overall traffic and gross merchandise sales. [Etsy, February 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
7. Shopify reports orders from AI search are up **15x** since January 2025, albeit on a small base. [Shopify, February 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
8. eBay reports AI-driven traffic is very small but high-intent and converts at a high rate. [eBay, February 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
9. Airbnb reports traffic from chatbots converts at a higher rate than traffic from Google. [Airbnb, February 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
10. Tripadvisor expects mid-to-high-teens percentage revenue declines, largely driven by SEO traffic headwinds. [Tripadvisor, February 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
11. Angi Inc. reports SEO currently generates around **7%** of its service request lead revenue. [Angi Inc., February 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
12. CoStar Group reports brand, direct, SEM, display, social, email, SEO and AEO traffic remain **99.5%** of its top-of-funnel sources, leaving AI and GEO at under **1%**. [CoStar Group, October 2025](https://detailed.com/public/)
13. News Corp reports Realtor.com properties received **29%** of total visits to all real estate portals, triple the visits of Homes.com and double those of Redfin. [News Corp, February 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
14. Pinterest reports **85%** of its users access the platform directly via its mobile app, and **100%** of users are logged in. [Pinterest, September 2025](https://detailed.com/public/)

## Revenue and attribution

1. Peec AI’s B2B SaaS and services clients often report **10%** to **20%** of revenue coming from AI search. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), January 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/what-should-marketing-teams-focus-on-for-ai-search-in-2026-insights-from-lily-ray-ethan-smith-and-peec-ai)
2. The highest AI search revenue share reported by a Peec AI client is **30%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), January 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/what-should-marketing-teams-focus-on-for-ai-search-in-2026-insights-from-lily-ray-ethan-smith-and-peec-ai)
3. B2B SaaS and tech companies typically attribute **4%** to **10%** of revenue to AI search. [Ethan Smith / Graphite, January 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/what-should-marketing-teams-focus-on-for-ai-search-in-2026-insights-from-lily-ray-ethan-smith-and-peec-ai)
4. A study of Amsive client data found **4%** to **5%** of revenue comes from AI search. [Lily Ray / Amsive, January 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/what-should-marketing-teams-focus-on-for-ai-search-in-2026-insights-from-lily-ray-ethan-smith-and-peec-ai)
5. About **10%** of brand discovery already happens via LLMs. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), January 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dark-chat-manifesto-end-attribution-we-know-malte-landwehr-8vxge)
6. For B2B SaaS businesses, self-reported attribution regularly shows **20%** of leads influenced by LLMs, while click-based tools show close to zero. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), January 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dark-chat-manifesto-end-attribution-we-know-malte-landwehr-8vxge)
7. One online shop generates **2 million** euros in revenue every month from clicks coming out of ChatGPT. Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026
8. Flow Agency receives **2.4%** of its traffic from ChatGPT but **20%** of its leads. [Flow Agency, September 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/violaeva_self-reported-attribution-vs-ga4-vs-hubspot-activity-7372251076739092480-RirX)
9. According to HubSpot, Flow Agency gets **0%** of leads from LLMs. According to a form survey, it is **22%**. [Flow Agency, September 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/violaeva_self-reported-attribution-vs-ga4-vs-hubspot-activity-7372251076739092480-RirX)
10. In 2025, **34%** of qualified B2B leads originated from AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Lureon 2025 Report
11. AI search is the fastest-growing channel for B2B lead generation. Lureon 2025 Report
12. **66%** of fintech CEOs report client growth from AI search. IDC via Lureon 2025 Report
13. Self-reported attribution assigns **11%** of Otterly’s conversions to Claude, against just **0.1%** under GA4 last-touch. [Otterly.AI, July 2026](https://otterly.ai/blog/measure-ai-search-conversions/)
14. Ad blockers block **20%** to **40%** of tracking scripts. Google, September 2026

## What actually moves visibility: tests and case studies

1. Adding statistics and quotations to content lifted AI visibility roughly **30%** to **40%**. [Princeton GEO Study via Brainlabs AI Report 2026](https://www.brainlabsdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/ai-discovery-report/report.pdf)
2. Rewriting vague headings such as “About X” into direct-answer headings such as “How to fix X” lifts the average citation rate **41%**, from **29%** to **41%**. [Brainlabs AI Report 2026](https://www.brainlabsdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/ai-discovery-report/report.pdf)
3. Correcting factual errors in existing content grew citations steadily within 2 weeks of fixing an inaccurate AI response. Brainlabs AI Report 2026
4. Updating website metadata grew LLM-referred new users **787%** and LLM referral traffic **174%** for a North American nutritional beverage brand. [Brainlabs AI Report 2026](https://www.brainlabsdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/ai-discovery-report/report.pdf)
5. Updating website metadata grew AI Overview citations **54%**, LLM citations **33%**, Google impressions **34%** and Google clicks **10%** for a North American nutritional beverage brand. [Brainlabs AI Report 2026](https://www.brainlabsdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/ai-discovery-report/report.pdf)
6. Ramp increased LLM visibility **78%** by updating existing pages for zero-volume and low-volume queries. [George Bonaci / Ramp, June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chris-long-marketing_must-watch-ramp-revealed-3-aeo-experiments-ugcPost-7467548232017920000-SOCg)
7. Ramp’s narrow micro-pages for niche product use cases achieved only a citation rate of about **2%**. [George Bonaci / Ramp, June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chris-long-marketing_must-watch-ramp-revealed-3-aeo-experiments-ugcPost-7467548232017920000-SOCg)
8. Ramp increased AI visibility in a test cohort by **24.6%** by rebuilding content around jobs-to-be-done instead of keywords. [George Bonaci / Ramp, November 2025](https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/zero-click-new-york-inagaural-ai-search-nyc-summit)
9. Ramp’s programmatic pages built on proprietary spend data increased sessions **149%** between June and August 2025. [George Bonaci / Ramp, November 2025](https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/zero-click-new-york-inagaural-ai-search-nyc-summit)
10. In an Omio A/B test, adding brand USP modules to pages lifted LLM referral traffic **18%** without harming Google organic traffic, and the change was rolled out. [Omio via Tom Critchlow, July 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomcritchlow_first-actual-data-study-ive-seen-around-ugcPost-7481383525158477824-34LC/)
11. A second Omio A/B test variant was not shipped because it would have cut Google organic sessions **6.5%**, Omio’s biggest organic channel. [Omio via Tom Critchlow, July 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomcritchlow_first-actual-data-study-ive-seen-around-ugcPost-7481383525158477824-34LC/)
12. Angling ecommerce shop fischen.ch increased its AI citations **35%** after publishing 100 community-generated content pieces across 79 shop URLs. [Guru webinar, July 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFWTSpna2rg)
13. After fischen.ch published community expert content, the number of its category pages cited in AI answers grew **104%**. [Guru webinar, July 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFWTSpna2rg)
14. Ski touring brand Dynafit roughly tripled AI source usage of its online shop after embedding community expert content on product detail pages. [Guru webinar, July 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFWTSpna2rg)
15. Dynafit’s brand mentions in AI answers rose from a **76.8%** baseline by about **15 percentage points** after embedding community expert content. [Guru webinar, July 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFWTSpna2rg)
16. Duckfund achieved a **16%** ChatGPT visibility lift in 90 days across commercial real estate financing queries. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-mint-position-helps-fintech-clients-unlock-16-more-ai-search-visibility-and-secure-1-search-positions-with-peec-ai)
17. Lula became the number 1 most-cited domain on ChatGPT for South African SME funding prompts and gained a **3%** share of voice boost in AI search. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-mint-position-helps-fintech-clients-unlock-16-more-ai-search-visibility-and-secure-1-search-positions-with-peec-ai)
18. Mint Position’s GEO service line drove **20%** year-over-year revenue growth for the agency, and **70%** of its clients actively use their Peec AI workspace login. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-mint-position-helps-fintech-clients-unlock-16-more-ai-search-visibility-and-secure-1-search-positions-with-peec-ai)
19. Merge drove a **7x** increase in demo requests from AI search and a **10x** boost in LLM search traffic. [Peec AI, November 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/how-merge-drove-a-7x-increase-in-demo-requests-from-llms-with-peec-ai)
20. Merge sees **6x** higher conversion rates from AI search compared to other channels. [Peec AI, November 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/how-merge-drove-a-7x-increase-in-demo-requests-from-llms-with-peec-ai)
21. Merge’s LLM-optimised article on best unified API platforms garnered 2,600 LLM mentions in a single month. [Peec AI, November 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/how-merge-drove-a-7x-increase-in-demo-requests-from-llms-with-peec-ai)
22. Momentum boosted its AI search visibility **10x** across all major LLMs, doubling visibility within one month and seeing a **2x** increase in session visits from AI search. [Peec AI, September 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/how-momentum-boosted-ai-search-visibility-by-10x-with-peec-ai)
23. Momentum optimised 100 articles for AI visibility, each targeting a specific prompt. [Peec AI, September 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/how-momentum-boosted-ai-search-visibility-by-10x-with-peec-ai)
24. Planeco Building increased SEO and AI search leads **5x**, and grew its citation share from **50%** to over **130%**. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/radyant-ai-search-visibility-case-study-peec-ai)
25. Heyflow’s AI search visibility increased from **10%** to **40%**. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/radyant-ai-search-visibility-case-study-peec-ai)
26. Radyant boosts AI search visibility across more than 50 startups and scaleups. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/radyant-ai-search-visibility-case-study-peec-ai)
27. One website grew its ChatGPT citations by more than **1,000%** within a few weeks. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), May 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-found-a-website-that-grew-1000-in-chatgpt-activity-7465098026341138432-ZGTN)
28. Ranking-style prompts lift brand mentions by about **20%** on average, and keyword-style prompts produce up to **25%** more brand mentions than conversational prompts. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr) via Search Engine Journal, June 2026](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-prompt-intent-keywords-peec-spa/576201/)
29. **88%** to **92%** of human prompt pairs sharing the same intent sit above **0.50** cosine similarity, and about **95%** sit above **0.40**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr) via Search Engine Journal, June 2026](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-prompt-intent-keywords-peec-spa/576201/)
30. Brand mention probability averages **4.9%** and drops **2.4 percentage points** when prompt similarity falls into the **0.35** to **0.39** bin. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr) via Search Engine Journal, June 2026](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-prompt-intent-keywords-peec-spa/576201/)
31. **2%** to **5%** of customers leave a review unprompted, skewed to 1 star. With active asking, **5%** to **20%** leave reviews, skewed to 5 stars. [Campixx 2026, June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_earlier-this-week-i-attended-the-campixx-activity-7473810609541791744-aiF_)
32. Sixt lifted its TrustPilot score from **1.3** to **4.2** by actively asking customers for reviews. [Campixx 2026, June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_earlier-this-week-i-attended-the-campixx-activity-7473810609541791744-aiF_)
33. Getting your own content cited gives a **4.8x** lift in AI visibility. [NP Digital, September 2026](https://neilpatel.com/blog/ai-visibility-myths-data/)

## B2B buying behaviour

1. **51%** of B2B buyers start their research with AI search instead of Google, up from **29%** in 2025. [Precis B2Breakfast 2026, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-am-sitting-at-the-airport-right-now-thinking-activity-7450202215136317440-VGvW)
2. **60%** of B2B buyers use AI tools during the purchasing process. [Precis B2Breakfast 2026, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-am-sitting-at-the-airport-right-now-thinking-activity-7450202215136317440-VGvW)
3. The average B2B purchasing process now takes 3 months instead of 5. [Precis B2Breakfast 2026, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-am-sitting-at-the-airport-right-now-thinking-activity-7450202215136317440-VGvW)
4. 1 in 5 dollars spent in B2B is influenced by AI Overviews. [Precis B2Breakfast 2026, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-am-sitting-at-the-airport-right-now-thinking-activity-7450202215136317440-VGvW)
5. **82%** of B2B buyers end up purchasing a product or service that was on their day 1 list. [Precis B2Breakfast 2026, April 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-am-sitting-at-the-airport-right-now-thinking-activity-7450202215136317440-VGvW)
6. **41%** of buyers trust AI search results over ads. Lureon 2025 Report
7. Prompts from B2B buyers are 15 to 23 words long. Lureon 2025 Report
8. Generative AI chatbots are the number 1 source influencing shortlists for B2B SaaS buyers. [G2 2025 Buyer Behavior Report](https://learn.g2.com/hubfs/G2-2025-Buyer-Behavior-Report-AI-Always-Included.pdf)
9. **16%** of Surfer’s registered users coming via Google search are SEOs, general managers or business owners. Via LLMs it is **21%**. Surfer, BrightonSEO October 2025
10. Via Google search, content writers find Surfer. Via LLMs it is owners, CEOs and general managers. Surfer, BrightonSEO October 2025
11. **42%** of buyers used AI search during evaluation. [HubSpot, September 2026](https://www.hubspot.com/company-news/aeo-data-buyers-using-ai-search-more-likely-to-purchase)
12. **73%** of buyers use AI in vendor search. HubSpot, September 2026
13. Buyers who use AI search convert at **4.4x** the rate of other buyers. HubSpot, September 2026
14. **92%** of B2B buyers buy from a vendor on their day-one shortlist. Seer Interactive, September 2026
15. **62%** of B2B buyers finalise their shortlist without speaking to sales. Seer Interactive, September 2026

## Consumer behaviour in AI-assisted research

1. **50%** of Europeans researching banking or insurance products now begin their research by using AI tools. [BCG B2C Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
2. **53%** of consumers researching banking or insurance products in six European markets use AI somewhere in their journey. [BCG B2C Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
3. **89%** of consumers who use AI to research banking or insurance products start that research directly in an LLM. [BCG B2C Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
4. **72%** of consumers who use AI to research banking or insurance products have specific providers named inside an AI-generated answer. [BCG B2C Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
5. **60%** of consumers who see providers named in an AI answer while researching banking or insurance are shown a provider they had not previously considered. [BCG B2C Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
6. **47%** of consumers who use AI to research banking or insurance products have their shortlist changed by AI answers. [BCG B2C Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
7. **23%** of consumers who use AI to research banking or insurance products changed their final provider choice as a direct result of AI, and **32%** say AI influenced their choice. [BCG B2C Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
8. **87%** of consumers who use AI to research banking or insurance products say AI makes exploring options faster, and **91%** would use AI tools again. [BCG B2C Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
9. **46%** of consumers who use AI to research banking or insurance products use AI four or more times for the same product. [BCG B2C Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
10. A Spanish digital insurer founded in 2021 became the first in its sector to launch a native app inside ChatGPT in early 2026, returning real-time personalised home insurance quotes without the user leaving the chat. [BCG, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
11. **37%** of consumers start searches with AI rather than Google, but **85%** still cross-reference through traditional search before converting. [Eight Oh Two AI and Search Behavior study 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/how-to-measure-ai-search-visibility-and-revenue-the-kpis-that-actually-matter)
12. **58%** of users used an answer engine in a recent product research or shopping journey within the last week. [Profound, September 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7378476735048351744-HTA7)
13. **80%** of buyers make at least half of their decisions with answer engines. [Profound, September 2025](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7378476735048351744-HTA7)
14. Relevance in the buying process for US internet users: during discovery and ideation AI scores **35%** versus search at **14%**. [SimilarWeb 2026 Generative AI Brand Visibility Index](https://www.similarweb.com/corp/2026-genai-brand-visibility-index/)
15. During research and comparison, AI scores **30%** versus search at **20%**. During the decision what to buy, AI scores **31%** versus **15%**. For where to buy and price comparison, AI scores **24%** versus **22%**. [SimilarWeb 2026 Generative AI Brand Visibility Index](https://www.similarweb.com/corp/2026-genai-brand-visibility-index/)
16. Consumer trust in purchase recommendations: brand websites **10%**, search engines **11%**, social media **15%**, generative AI **18%**, physical stores **19%**. eMarketer via Accenture Consumer Pulse, December 2025
17. More U.S. adults say AI chatbots help rather than hurt their productivity (**30%** versus **5%**), how informed they are (**28%** versus **5%**), their creativity (**21%** versus **11%**) and their happiness (**8%** versus **5%**). [Pew Research Center, June 2026](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/)
18. **31%** of U.S. adults predict AI will negatively impact them personally over the next 20 years, while **23%** predict a positive personal impact. [Pew Research Center, June 2026](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/)
19. **40%** of U.S. adults predict AI will have a negative impact on society over the next 20 years, while **16%** predict a positive impact. [Pew Research Center, June 2026](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/)
20. **54%** of New York Times readers prefer AI-written content over human-written content, based on 86,000 people who did not know which content was AI-written. [Kevin Roose / New York Times, March 2026](https://x.com/kevinroose/status/2031397522590282212)
21. Expert readers are **8x** more likely to choose an AI’s writing over a human expert’s writing, and evaluated the general writing quality of AI almost twice as good. [MIT and Columbia, November 2025](https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13939)
22. **80%** of consumer journeys now have an AI waypoint. Semrush, September 2026
23. AI without search accounts for **1.3%** of all transactional journeys. Similarweb, September 2026
24. **75%** of consumers trust AI or LLM recommendations. Semrush, March 2026
25. **79%** of consumers have had a purchase decision influenced by AI. Semrush, September 2026

## Brand perception, bias and hallucination

1. Across 904 real brands tested, AI models describe companies with positively-valenced names more favorably. A brand name that is **11%** more positive leads to a **0.8%** more positive description of the company by AI assistants. [Peec AI (Jan Ehrlinspiel), August 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ai-assistants-judge-your-company-by-its-name-i-measured-how-much)
2. Asked directly about Costco, **0%** of LLM answers mention a pharmacy. Asked for supermarkets known for pharmacies, **80%** of answers contain Costco. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), February 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_do-you-know-how-llms-perceive-your-brand-activity-7424181441866907648-zbtG)
3. ChatGPT picks the wrong domain in up to **99%** of cases for startups whose name is shared with another company. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-stumbled-upon-a-potential-vulnerability-activity-7489295537318473729-oApx)
4. **5%** of GPT-**5.6**’s site: searches about one startup ask for a parked domain instead of the company’s real domain. For other startups the rate is **6%**, **7%**, **7%** and **16%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-stumbled-upon-a-potential-vulnerability-activity-7489295537318473729-oApx)
5. On 11 September 2026, **0%** of the claims LLMs made about whether Peec AI can track Naver AI Briefing were correct. Three days after a single Reddit post answered the question, **83%** were correct. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), September 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_we-recently-added-naver-ai-briefings-to-the-activity-7506330704692125698-IHmz)
6. **74%** of the pricing sources cited for a brand are the brand’s own pricing page, **23%** are the brand’s secondary pricing content such as help center articles and press releases, and **3%** are competitor pricing pages. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), September 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_since-the-switch-to-gpt-56-we-are-seeing-activity-7507756432105070592-tNUT)
7. Gemini and Perplexity repeat seeded misinformation in **37%** to **39%** of answers. ChatGPT-4 and ChatGPT-5 do so in under **7%**. [Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report Q1 2026](https://ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26)
8. **75%** of negative Sitejabber reviews of Revolut come from accounts with only one review. [Peec AI, January 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/ultimate-guide-to-tracking-brand-sentiment-in-llms)
9. Asked repeatedly for a random number between 1 and 100, LLMs answer 42, 47, 57 or 73 in **66%** of cases. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-asked-llms-to-generate-a-random-number-activity-7500210915083038720-57Aa)
10. Asked for a random number between 1 and 100, Mistral answers 47 or 73 in **93%** of cases, Claude answers 47 in **92%**, ChatGPT answers 30, 47 or 57 in **88%**, Perplexity answers 42 or 57 in **87%**, Copilot answers 47 in **83%**, Google AI Overview answers 42 or 73 in **78%**, Gemini answers 42 in **75%**, Grok answers 73, 42 or 57 in **75%**, and Google AI Mode answers 42 in **52%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), August 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-asked-llms-to-generate-a-random-number-activity-7500210915083038720-57Aa)
11. Across more than 15,000 chats in 10 languages from 18 countries, LLMs predict Spain will win the FIFA World Cup. AI Overviews predict it with **88%** confidence, Copilot with only **39%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-asked-7-llms-two-simple-questions-which-activity-7469020445586124800-kIjW)
12. Asked in Spanish from a Spanish IP, ChatGPT picks Spain to win the World Cup in **86%** of cases. The all-country average is **61%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-asked-7-llms-two-simple-questions-which-activity-7469020445586124800-kIjW)
13. ChatGPT is the most consistent LLM across countries with **94%** answer agreement. AI Overviews are the least consistent at **29%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-asked-7-llms-two-simple-questions-which-activity-7469020445586124800-kIjW)
14. LLMs use web search in **62%** of World Cup prediction chats, and Grok regularly cites X posts with 0 likes from accounts under 10,000 followers. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_i-asked-7-llms-two-simple-questions-which-activity-7469020445586124800-kIjW)
15. ChatGPT shows **90%** fewer follow-up questions since the GPT-**5.5** update of 24 June 2026. [Peec AI (David Konitzny), June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_with-the-changes-made-to-gpt-55-two-days-activity-7476175080541155329-H2mJ)
16. ChatGPT follow-up questions dropped **50%** in late May 2026 but recovered to previous levels by mid June. [Peec AI (David Konitzny), June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_with-the-changes-made-to-gpt-55-two-days-activity-7476175080541155329-H2mJ)
17. A website marketed as “built for AI citations” accounts for 1 of the last **1.5 million** citations Peec AI tracked for the prompts that site targets, less than **0.0001%**. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), September 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2100104161278775455)
18. Google AI Overviews hallucinate about **10%** of the time. [New York Times, April 2026](https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/04/08/how-accurate-are-googles-ai-overviews)

## The risk of AI-generated content

1. **36%** of brands featured in one AI content generation tool’s success stories showed massive visibility and traffic drops in Google. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-risk-of-ai-generated-content)
2. 3 out of 4 brands featured on another AI content generation platform’s website have suffered significant Google visibility losses. [Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-risk-of-ai-generated-content)
3. **57%** of the flagship case-study customers of a popular AI content tool saw their Google rankings tank. **22%** show a perfect Mount AI shape. [Malte Landwehr, February 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_are-ai-content-tools-tanking-their-customers-activity-7432727457323016193-qKCB)
4. **100%** of pages removed by Google’s March 2024 spam update had AI-generated posts, and half of those sites had **80%** to **90%** of their content generated by AI. [Originality.AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-risk-of-ai-generated-content)
5. Google tested AI content detectors on **500 million** web pages in research published in 2020 and 2021, and employs 16,000 human contractors on its Search Quality Raters team. [Google, via Peec AI, February 2026](https://peec.ai/blog/the-real-risk-of-ai-generated-content)

## Publishers and the traffic recession

1. Organic search traffic declined **42%** from Q1 2023 to Q4 2025, based on 64 publisher sites generating over **1 billion** clicks per quarter. [Define Media Group, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shahzadabbas_seo-aioverviews-googlediscover-activity-7437213585468198912-5e1P/)
2. Organic search traffic to publishers declined noticeably in Q2 2024 when AI Overviews launched and again in Q2 2025 when AI Overviews expanded. [Define Media Group, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shahzadabbas_seo-aioverviews-googlediscover-activity-7437213585468198912-5e1P/)
3. Google Discover is now driving more traffic to publishers than organic search. [Define Media Group, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shahzadabbas_seo-aioverviews-googlediscover-activity-7437213585468198912-5e1P/)
4. Organic traffic to news sites has dropped **26%** since Google launched AI Overviews. [SimilarWeb, June 2025](https://www.similarweb.com/corp/reports/generative-ai-publishers/)
5. Between January 2024 and May 2025, news-related prompts in ChatGPT rose **212%**, while equivalent Google searches declined **5%**. [SimilarWeb, June 2025](https://www.similarweb.com/corp/reports/generative-ai-publishers/)
6. Clicks from ChatGPT to US news websites increased **25x** from H1 2024 to H1 2025, from **1 million** to **25 million**. [SimilarWeb, June 2025](https://www.similarweb.com/corp/reports/generative-ai-publishers/)
7. IAC and Dotdash Meredith report a **50%** drop in Google search referrals over two years. [IAC, February 2026](https://detailed.com/public/)
8. People Inc., formerly Dotdash Meredith, reports Google Search declined from **50%** to **28%** of its sessions and now represents **18%** of its digital revenue. [People Inc., September 2025](https://detailed.com/public/)

## The GEO industry itself

1. AEO and GEO is the number 1 strategic priority for CMOs in 2026, and **32%** of CMOs listed it as their top priority. Conductor, State of AEO/GEO in 2026 CMO Investment Report
2. In 2025, enterprises allocated **12%** of their digital budgets to AEO and GEO. [Conductor, State of AEO/GEO in 2026 CMO Investment Report](https://www.conductor.com/academy/state-of-aeo-geo-report/)
3. **94%** of companies plan to increase their GEO budget in 2026. [Conductor, State of AEO/GEO in 2026 CMO Investment Report](https://www.conductor.com/academy/state-of-aeo-geo-report/)
4. **56%** of B2B companies above $10M ARR and **46%** of those below $10M ARR name AI discovery (AEO) among the three go-to-market channels where they plan to increase investment most in 2027. No other channel scores higher in either group. Growth Unhinged and GTM Strategist, 2026 State of B2B GTM Report (N=300)
5. **64%** of companies plan to upskill existing team members in GEO, and **29%** plan to hire for AEO-specific roles. Conductor, State of AEO/GEO in 2026 CMO Investment Report
6. **35%** of B2B marketers listed GEO as their top priority, overtaking traditional SEO at **29%**. Lureon 2025 Report
7. **90%** of CMOs globally agree that generative AI is already reshaping how consumers discover and evaluate brands. [BCG CMO Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
8. **61%** of senior banking and insurance marketing leaders say AI-driven searches already have a large or very large impact on customer acquisition. [BCG B2B Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
9. **61%** of banking and insurance marketing leaders rate their own GEO and AEO maturity as Established, Advanced or Leading, but only **37%** have a defined framework for measuring it. [BCG B2B Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
10. **73%** of banking and insurance marketing leaders expect GEO and AEO to become a higher priority over the next 12 months, and **88%** are already researching how AI is changing customer decision-making. [BCG B2B Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
11. GEO and AEO is owned by Digital Marketing in **31%** of banking and insurance organisations and by SEO or Content in **28%**. Only **15%** run a cross-functional squad. [BCG B2B Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
12. GEO and AEO is discussed at marketing level in **79%** of banking and insurance organisations and at executive level in **77%**, but by Analytics in only **39%**, Tech in **26%** and Legal or Compliance in **25%**. [BCG B2B Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
13. GEO and AEO already accounts for around **10%** of first-touch entry channels in digitally originated banking and insurance acquisition journeys. [BCG B2B Banking and Insurance Survey 2026, September 2026](https://www.bcg.com/assets/2026/the-algorithm-makes-the-shortlist.pdf)
14. **84%** of Germany’s top 100 SEO agencies now offer GEO services, **30%** list GEO as one of their focus areas, and **7%** primarily offer GEO. [iBusiness, March 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_most-seo-agencies-are-now-geo-agencies-activity-7440030279630680064-yR88)
15. An SEO agency with 30 employees pays 5,000 to 6,000 euros per month in pure LLM token costs. A small agency pays under 1,000 euros. [Campixx 2026, June 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_earlier-this-week-i-attended-the-campixx-activity-7473810609541791744-aiF_)
16. 357 teams signed up for Peec AI’s **$10,000**MCP workflow contest, and 67 submitted an entry. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_let-me-show-you-the-best-aeogeo-workflows-activity-7458061372141154304-e6f2)
17. The energy used for a Gemini text prompt has dropped **33x** in only 12 months, and the carbon footprint **44x**. [Google, August 2025](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/measuring_the_environmental_impact_of_delivering_ai_at_google_scale.pdf)

## Peec AI by the numbers

1. Peec AI grew from **$0**to more than **$4M** ARR in 10 months and reached **$10M** ARR 16 months after launch. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://x.com/MalteLandwehr/status/2059922887184708088)
2. Peec AI grew from 25 people and **$5M** ARR to 70 people and **$10M** ARR in 5 months. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_when-i-joined-peec-ai-a-year-ago-people-activity-7465675028718759937-TQye)
3. Peec AI is a top **2%** company globally by ARR growth. [Peec AI, May 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_when-i-joined-peec-ai-a-year-ago-people-activity-7465675028718759937-TQye)
4. Peec AI raised a **$21 million** Series A led by Singular, bringing total funding to **$29 million**. [Peec AI, November 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/we-raised-21m-series-a-to-help-brands-win-in-ai-search)
5. Peec AI onboarded more than 1,300 brands and agencies between February 2025 and November 2025, and adds 300+ customers per month. [Peec AI, November 2025](https://peec.ai/blog/we-raised-21m-series-a-to-help-brands-win-in-ai-search)
6. Peec AI passed 2,000 paying customers within 14 months and helps more than 2,500 companies understand how they are represented in ChatGPT, Gemini and other engines. [Peec AI, 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_peec-ai-is-in-the-process-of-opening-a-new-activity-7450936616115744769-8Buk)
7. Peec AI has analysed more than **400 million** LLM chats across more than 3,000 customers. [Peec AI (Malte Landwehr), July 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/landwehr_if-you-want-llms-to-recommend-you-third-party-activity-7487780914786320385-Wwn2)

## What these numbers mean

**The click has stopped being the unit of value.** ChatGPT is roughly 99% zero-click and Google AI Mode about 95%. Web analytics misses more than 95% of the impact of AI search. If your reporting still counts sessions, it is measuring the small residue of the channel and calling it the channel. The number to track is whether you appear inside the answer, not how many people leave it.

**Answer engines have learnable preferences, and they are not subtle.** Reddit is the most-cited domain on every major engine. Wikipedia leads inside ChatGPT, YouTube inside both of Google’s AI surfaces, X inside Grok. Listicles and comparison pages get cited far out of proportion to how many of them exist. Engines rewrite your prompt into sub-queries before they search, inject words the user never typed, and research on the English-language web even when asked in another language. None of that shows up in a rank tracker, and all of it is measurable.

**Citations follow a winner-take-most distribution.** A large share of URLs never get cited at all, and a small fraction of them take most of the citations. That is bad news if you are starting from nothing and good news if you are willing to do the work, because the same asymmetry means a modest number of well-placed third-party mentions moves the needle more than a large volume of your own pages.

**The traffic that does arrive is worth more than what it replaced.** ChatGPT converts at 11% on ecommerce sites against 5% for SEO, a click from a language model has been valued at 4x an organic one, and visitors from AI search spend longer on site. 51% of B2B buyers now start their research in AI search rather than Google, and 82% of them buy something that was on their shortlist on day one. Being absent from that first list is the expensive failure, not losing a ranking.

What follows from all four is the same thing. AI search is its own channel, not a modifier on the old one, and it needs its own measurement: citations rather than rankings, placements in the third-party sources engines trust, pages structured for a machine reader, and every engine looked at separately rather than averaged. It also needs looking at often. ChatGPT reversed its treatment of machine-translated Reddit pages inside a single month, and Google went from almost no external links inside AI Overviews to 26.2% of them in nine days. A quarterly report would have missed both.

## Frequently asked questions

### How many people use AI search?

About half of US adults (49%) said they use AI chatbots in 2026, up from 33% in 2024. Worldwide, close to 4 billion people use a large language model every month, and monthly sessions across AI tools are now 56% the size of search worldwide and 34% the size of search in the US.

### What percentage of AI searches end without a click?

ChatGPT’s zero-click rate is roughly 99% and Google AI Mode’s is about 95%. Where 35% to 40% of Google searches lead to a click, only 1% to 5% of search-like prompts in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode do.

### Which websites do AI search engines cite most?

Reddit, across every major engine. The ten most-cited domains are Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Forbes, G2, Yelp, Facebook, Medium and TechRadar in that order. Wikipedia leads inside ChatGPT specifically, and YouTube inside both of Google’s AI surfaces.

### How much do Google AI Overviews reduce click-through rate?

Across more than 15 studies the measured effect ranges from +19% to -85%, averaging -40% with a median of -37%. Ahrefs measured a 58% drop in clicks to number-one-ranked content, and 19.4% at position 10.

### Does AI referral traffic convert better than search traffic?

On the measurements available, yes. ChatGPT traffic converts at 11% on ecommerce sites against 9% for paid search and 5% for SEO, and a click from a language model has been valued at 4x a click from organic search. The volume is the catch: ChatGPT traffic is 0.5% to 2% of total website visits for most brands.

### What actually works to improve visibility in AI search?

Adding statistics and quotations to content lifted AI visibility roughly 30% to 40% in the original Princeton research. Rewriting vague headings into direct-answer headings lifted the average citation rate from 29% to 41%. Ramp increased visibility 78% by updating existing pages for zero-volume and low-volume queries, and Omio lifted referral traffic from language models 18% in an A/B test by adding brand USP modules to its pages.

## Why this page exists

> I am a very factual person and I prefer data over feelings. Back when I was an in-house SEO, every conversation with leadership and other internal stakeholders went better when I brought a number instead of an opinion. The same is true when I speak at conferences: I am constantly looking for statistics I can cite. This page is where I share the ones I have found useful over the past months and years.
>

*- Malte Landwehr*

## Methodology

This page is maintained by [Malte Landwehr](https://www.maltelandwehr.de/), who has worked in SEO for over 20 years and is CPO and CMO of Peec AI. Every statistic on it was checked against its original source in September 2026.

The 594 entries draw on more than 100 named sources, and on primary sources only: peer-reviewed and preprint research, official company announcements and earnings calls, court filings, independent research organisations and vendor studies that publish their method. The data behind them was collected across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Claude and Grok. Nothing here is taken from another statistics roundup.

Every entry names its source and, with one exception, when it was published: 433 of the 594 figures date from 2026. Sources are linked where possible. Some information comes from conference presentations or since-deleted social media accounts. Where a number is an estimate rather than a measurement, the entry says so. Where two sources disagree, both are listed rather than averaged: the samples, engines, markets and definitions behind them differ enough that a single blended figure would be less true than either. Nothing on this page is here without a named source.

## How to cite this page

The page changes as new figures come in. Cite the version you read by its last-updated date, and give the date you accessed it. Where you quote a single figure, cite the original source named in the entry as well.

### APA (7th edition)

Landwehr, M. (2026, October 15). *594 AI search statistics for 2026*. https://www.maltelandwehr.de/ai-search-statistics/

### Chicago (17th edition)

Landwehr, Malte. “594 AI Search Statistics for 2026.” Last modified October 15, 2026. https://www.maltelandwehr.de/ai-search-statistics/.

### BibTeX

```
@misc{landwehr2026aisearchstatistics,
  author       = {Landwehr, Malte},
  title        = {594 AI Search Statistics for 2026},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  howpublished = {\url{https://www.maltelandwehr.de/ai-search-statistics/}},
  note         = {First published 28 September 2026, last updated 15 October 2026}
}
```