AI search statistics, 2026
Thirteen numbers on who uses AI search, how buyers use it, and what the visitors are worth. Each one links to the primary source and carries its date. No vendor round-up figures, no estimates.
By Daria Dovzhikova · September 2026
The short version
- Half of B2B software buyers start in a chatbot, and it is the number one influence on the shortlist (G2, April 2026).
- Half of US adults use AI chatbots; 44% use ChatGPT (Pew, June 2026).
- Google AI Overviews reach 2.5 billion people a month, AI Mode 1 billion (Google, May 2026).
- An AI search visitor is worth about 4.4 organic visitors on conversion rate (Semrush, July 2025).
- 97% of llms.txt files get zero traffic (Ahrefs, June 2026). The file is not the work.
How this page was built
Every figure below was read on the publishing organisation's own page on 23 September 2026. Where a survey has a sample size and field dates, they are in the source column. I left out any number I could only find in a secondary write-up, which is why some widely quoted figures are missing. Statistics are listed with the date they were published, not the date of this page; a July 2025 study is still the most recent primary source on conversion value, so it stays.
The last row in the final table is this site's own analytics. It is one small B2B site over 28 days. It is here as a worked example of what the GA4 channel shows, not as a benchmark.
How B2B buyers use AI search
| Figure | What it means | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| 51% | of B2B software buyers now begin their purchasing process in an AI chatbot rather than a traditional search engine, up from 29% eleven months earlier. | G2, survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers, March 202615 April 2026 |
| #1 | AI chatbots are the number one source influencing which vendors make a buyer's shortlist. | G2, same survey15 April 2026 |
| 69% | of buyers chose a different vendor than they had planned, based on AI guidance. 33% bought from a vendor they had not heard of before. | G2, same survey15 April 2026 |
| 45% | say citations from software review sites are the most confidence-inspiring signal in an AI answer. 85% view a vendor more favourably when a chatbot mentions it. | G2, same survey15 April 2026 |
| 71% | of B2B software buyers rely on AI chatbots for research, up from 60% seven months earlier. | G2, same survey15 April 2026 |
The 51% is the figure I put under the hero of this site. The one I would read next to it is the 45%: buyers trust a chatbot's answer most when it cites a review site. Being named is half the job. Being named from a source the buyer already trusts is the other half.
How many people use AI search
| Figure | What it means | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| About half | of US adults now use AI chatbots, up from a third in 2024. | Pew Research Center, 5,119 US adults surveyed 17 to 23 February 202617 June 2026 |
| 44% | of US adults report using ChatGPT, up from 34% the year before. | Pew Research Center, same survey17 June 2026 |
| About a quarter | of Americans use chatbots daily. | Pew Research Center, same survey17 June 2026 |
| 2.5 billion | monthly active users of Google AI Overviews, in Google's own words "more people than any other product in the world" for delivering AI. | Google, Sundar Pichai's I/O 2026 keynote post19 May 2026 |
| 1 billion | monthly active users of Google AI Mode one year after launch, with queries more than doubling every quarter since. | Google, I/O 202619 May 2026 |
Two different things are being counted here. Pew counts people who say they use a chatbot. Google counts monthly active users of a feature that appears inside a search most people were already doing. Both are real; the Google figure says AI answers are now the default reading experience for a search, the Pew figure says the chatbot habit is at half the adult population and still growing.
What AI search visitors are worth, and what does not move them
| Figure | What it means | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| 4.4x | the average AI search visitor, tracked to a non-Google source such as ChatGPT, is 4.4 times as valuable as the average visit from traditional organic search, measured on conversion rate. | Semrush, study across 500+ high-value topics21 July 2025 |
| 97% | of llms.txt files across 137,000 domains received zero traffic in May 2026. Nothing fetched them at all. | Ahrefs, llms.txt study15 June 2026 |
| 48 of 405 | sessions on this site came from the GA4 AI Assistant channel in the 28 days to 20 September 2026, with 1 minute 28 seconds of average engagement against 14 seconds for organic search. Low volume, the highest intent on the site. | GTM Labs, first-party GA4 data21 September 2026 |
The 4.4x is the number most often repeated without its date. It is from July 2025 and it measures conversion rate on Semrush's own topic set. The direction matches what I see: a visitor who arrives from an answer has already done the comparing. The size of the multiplier on your site is something you measure, not something you quote. How to measure it is in Did that lead come from ChatGPT?
Where the numbers come from in your own analytics
Google Analytics 4 has a default channel called AI Assistant. Google's definition is sessions that arrive "from sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot, or Grok". It does not include Google's own AI Overviews or AI Mode, which are counted as Google search. So the two biggest numbers on this page, AI Overviews and AI Mode, never show up as AI traffic in GA4. If your organic search sessions are flat while your AI Assistant channel grows, part of the flat line is AI Mode.
How to cite this page
Cite the original source for any figure; the links are in each row. If you are quoting the first-party datapoint, cite it as: GTM Labs, AI Assistant channel, 28 days to 20 September 2026, gtm-labs.co/ai-search-statistics. I update this page when a primary source publishes a newer figure, and the date of each row changes when its source does.
If you want the number for your own category rather than the market, the free visibility check reads where four engines name you on unbranded questions. When AI visibility is one of the two experiment cards in a Growth Pilot, week one runs the same read on 48 prompts with a person reading every answer.
Questions
How many people use AI search in 2026?
Google puts AI Overviews at over 2.5 billion monthly active users and AI Mode at over 1 billion, as of I/O in May 2026. Pew Research found about half of US adults use AI chatbots and 44% use ChatGPT, from a February 2026 survey of 5,119 adults. Those are the largest primary-source figures available; vendor round-ups quoting bigger numbers usually trace back to these or to unpublished estimates.
What share of B2B buyers start research in an AI chatbot?
51%, according to G2's survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers in March 2026, up from 29% eleven months earlier. The same survey found AI chatbots are the number one source influencing which vendors reach the shortlist.
Do AI search visitors convert better than organic search visitors?
Semrush's study, published July 2025, found the average AI search visitor was 4.4 times as valuable as an organic search visitor on conversion rate. On this site the pattern is engagement rather than conversion: AI Assistant sessions average 1 minute 28 seconds against 14 seconds from organic search. Treat any multiplier as a starting hypothesis and measure your own.
How does Google Analytics count traffic from ChatGPT?
GA4's default channel group has an AI Assistant channel for sessions that arrive from sources such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot or Grok. Google's definition excludes its own AI Overviews and AI Mode, which are counted with Google search. The channel only records visits where the referrer reached your site; some assistants drop it, and those sessions land in Direct.
Does llms.txt improve AI visibility?
The only large study says no effect worth the file. Ahrefs looked at 137,000 domains and found 97% of llms.txt files received zero traffic in May 2026. Being cited depends on pages an engine can extract from and on third-party mentions, not on a manifest file.
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