AI search statistics 2026: ChatGPT users, market share and AI Overviews
ChatGPT has 900M+ weekly users and 51.58% of AI chatbot use worldwide (October 2026). Gemini's app has 1B+ monthly users. AI assistants send 0.32% of web traffic, and AI Overviews cut clicks. Primary sources only.
ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly users (OpenAI, February 2026) and 51.58% of AI chatbot use worldwide (StatCounter, October 2026). Google's Gemini app has passed 1 billion monthly users. Yet AI assistants send only 0.32% of website traffic, and Google searches with an AI Overview get fewer clicks.
This page collects 60 AI search statistics from the companies and researchers that measured them. Every number links to its primary source, which we opened on 1 November 2026. We say what each number measures, who measured it, when and on how many people, sites or answers. Where sources disagree, we show both. We check it monthly.
What are the 10 most important AI search statistics?
900M+ weekly ChatGPT users. OpenAI's own count, announced 27 February 2026. Source
51.58% ChatGPT market share. ChatGPT's share of AI chatbot use worldwide in October 2026, ahead of Gemini (28.86%) and Perplexity (15.04%). StatCounter
1B+ monthly Gemini app users. Google, 28 October 2026, up from 450M+ in July 2025. Source
44% of US adults use ChatGPT. Up from 18% in 2023. Pew Research Center, February 2026, 5,119 adults. Source
2.5B+ monthly AI Overviews users. Google, 19 May 2026, up from 2B+ in July 2025. Source
8% vs 15%. Share of Google visits with a click on a normal result, with an AI summary vs without one. Pew Research Center, March 2025, 900 adults. Source
51% of B2B buyers now start software research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google. G2, March 2026, 1,076 decision-makers. Source
40% of cited sources were independent lists. For buyer questions, vendors' own sites got 34% and review sites 3%. Prefer, July 2026, 188 answers. Source
0.32% of website traffic comes from AI assistants, up from 0.24% in 2025. SE Ranking, 101,574 websites. Source
38,066 to 1. Pages Anthropic's crawlers fetched per visit sent back in July 2025. OpenAI: 1,091 to 1. Google: 5.4 to 1. Cloudflare
How many people use ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot?
ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users, the latest figure OpenAI itself has published (27 February 2026). OpenAI also reported more than 50 million consumer subscribers and more than 9 million paying business users. Google says the Gemini app has more than 1 billion monthly users. These two numbers are not directly comparable: OpenAI counts weekly users, Google counts monthly users. Perplexity and Anthropic (Claude) have not published a current user count on their own sites, so for them we use survey and traffic data.
AI assistant usage, 2025 to 2026
Statistic
What it measures
Who measured it
When
Sample
900M+
People who use ChatGPT each week (weekly active users)
Each row was opened at the linked primary source on 1 November 2026. "Not stated" means the source does not give it. Company user counts are each company's own figures and are not audited.
What is ChatGPT's market share?
ChatGPT had 51.58% of AI chatbot use worldwide in October 2026, according to StatCounter. Similarweb puts its share of visits to generative AI websites at about 53% in May 2026, down from about 76% a year earlier. Gemini gained the most. Among B2B software buyers, G2 found a higher ChatGPT share: 62%.
Each row was opened at the linked primary source on 1 November 2026. "Not stated" means the source does not give it. StatCounter, Similarweb and G2 measure different things: StatCounter tracks use on the sites in its network, Similarweb tracks website visits, G2 asked B2B buyers. Don't compare them as if they were one series.
How many people see Google AI Overviews, and do they reduce clicks?
Google says AI Overviews had more than 2.5 billion monthly active users in May 2026. They lower clicks on normal results: Pew found people clicked a result on 8% of visits with an AI summary and 15% without one. Ahrefs measured a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page. In Seer Interactive's data, brands cited inside the Overview got more clicks than brands left out.
AI Overviews: reach and click effects
Statistic
What it measures
Who measured it
When
Sample
2.5B+
Monthly active users of AI Overviews in Google Search (2B+ in 200+ countries and territories and 40 languages in July 2025, per Google's Q2 2025 remarks)
Organic clicks per impression for brands cited in the AI Overview vs brands not cited (2.07% vs 0.94%, informational queries). A correlation, not proof of cause. Seer notes one account makes up 47% of the not-cited impressions
Each row was opened at the linked primary source on 1 November 2026. "Not stated" means the source does not give it. Pew and Seer report the share of searches with an AI Overview on different query sets, so their percentages differ (see below).
How do B2B buyers use AI to choose software?
Most B2B buyers now use AI somewhere in their research. In G2's March 2026 survey, 51% start in an AI chatbot more often than in Google, and 54% say chatbots shape their shortlist more than any other source. Buyers still check: 94% of the AI users TrustRadius surveyed fact-check the answers.
B2B buyers and AI
Statistic
What it measures
Who measured it
When
Sample
51%
B2B software buyers who now start their research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google
B2B buyers who say they now rely on AI chatbots for software research, up from about 60% seven months earlier (80% still use Google somewhere in their buying journey)
Each row was opened at the linked primary source on 1 November 2026. "Not stated" means the source does not give it. G2, Forrester and TrustRadius asked different people different questions; see below for why their usage figures range from 63% to 94%.
What sources do AI assistants cite?
For buyer questions, AI assistants cite other people's pages far more than the brand's own. In Prefer's July 2026 study, independent list articles were 40% of cited sources. Foundation found that on category questions only 2.24% of citations went to the brand's own pages. Answers also change a lot between engines and between runs.
What AI answers cite
Statistic
What it measures
Who measured it
When
Sample
40%
Share of the sources AI assistants cited for buyer questions that were independent lists. Vendors' own sites: 34%, review sites: 3%
Overlap between two runs of the same question on ChatGPT: sites cited by both runs as a share of all sites either run cited. Gemini: 35%, Claude: 68%, Perplexity: 96%
September 2026 snapshot (updated 2 September 2026)
3M+ US queries, all topics
Each row was opened at the linked primary source on 1 November 2026. "Not stated" means the source does not give it. Prefer's July and September 2026 studies are separate studies with different samples.
If you want to know how list articles fit into this, read our guide to LLM SEO and our definition of a listicle. To see what list spots cost, see the listicle placement price index.
How much do AI crawlers take compared with the traffic they send?
AI crawlers fetch far more pages than they send visitors back. In July 2025, Cloudflare counted 38,066 pages fetched by Anthropic's crawlers for every visit sent back, 1,091 for OpenAI and 5.4 for Google. Most AI crawling (80%) is for model training, not for answering a live question.
AI crawler traffic
Statistic
What it measures
Who measured it
When
Sample
4.2%
Share of HTML requests on Cloudflare's network made by AI crawlers. Googlebot alone made 4.5%
Each row was opened at the linked primary source on 1 November 2026. "Not stated" means the source does not give it. Cloudflare measures traffic on its own network, which covers a large share of websites but not all of them.
How much traffic does AI search send, and does it convert?
AI assistants still send a small share of traffic: 0.32% of all website visits in SE Ranking's 2026 data, and under 1% on publisher sites in Microsoft Clarity's data. But it is growing fast, and in the latest data of every study on this page, visitors from AI converted better. ChatGPT sends about three in four AI referral visits.
AI referral traffic and conversion
Statistic
What it measures
Who measured it
When
Sample
0.32%
Share of all website traffic that comes from AI assistants (0.24% in 2025, 0.02% in 2024)
The average visitor from AI search (non-Google sources such as ChatGPT) is 4.4 times as valuable as the average traditional organic search visitor, based on conversion rate
Each row was opened at the linked primary source on 1 November 2026. "Not stated" means the source does not give it. Ahrefs' figure covers one website. Adobe's figures cover consumer retail, not B2B.
Where do the sources disagree?
ChatGPT's share. StatCounter: 51.58% of chatbot use (October 2026). Similarweb: about 53% of generative AI website visits (May 2026). G2: 62% among B2B buyers (March 2026). SE Ranking: 74.78% of AI referral traffic (2026). Each measures something different, so all four can be true.
Claude's share. StatCounter: 2.30%. Similarweb: close to 9% of generative AI visits. SE Ranking: 2.62% of AI referrals. Pew: 6% of US adults say they use it. Web visits count heavy users more than once; surveys count people.
How often AI Overviews appear. Pew: 18% of searches (March 2025). Semrush: 15.69% of queries in November 2025, after a peak of 24.61% in July. Seer: 36% of informational queries. The query sets differ: Pew used real browsing by 900 adults, Semrush 10M+ keywords, Seer the queries of 53 brands.
How many B2B buyers use AI. Forrester: 94% (nearly 18,000 buyers, published January 2026). G2: 71% (1,076, March 2026). TrustRadius: 63% (1,862, January 2026). The questions differ: Forrester asked about AI "during the buying process", TrustRadius about the "purchase journey".
Do AI Overviews cite top-ranking pages? Ahrefs found 37.9% of cited URLs ranked in the top 10 in March 2026. It compares this with about 76% of citations taken straight from the original results page in July 2025. Ahrefs thinks AI Overviews now draw more on related searches (a hypothesis, since Google does not show them), and says its method also improved, so the two figures are not fully like-for-like.
AI crawling for user actions. Cloudflare's 2025 Year in Review says it grew "over 15x" in its summary and "over 21x" from January to early December in the body text. We use the lower figure.
What do these numbers mean for B2B SaaS brands?
Three things stand out. Buyers start in AI chatbots, and those chatbots mostly cite pages the brand does not own, often list articles. Clicks from Google fall when an AI Overview shows, but brands cited in it keep more of them. And the traffic AI sends is small but converts well. None of these studies proves that one tactic gets a brand cited: Google and the AI assistants decide.
Rank Monthly books businesses into the listicles, newsletters and LinkedIn creator posts that buyers read and AI assistants quote, and keeps them there. See how it works for businesses, or see how it differs from AI visibility tools, which track mentions. For the terms on this page, read SEO vs GEO vs AEO.
How we collected these numbers
Primary sources only. Every statistic comes from the company or researcher that measured it: a company's own announcement or earnings remarks, a survey publisher, or the firm that ran the analysis. We did not use statistics roundups or news articles as sources.
Opened on 1 November 2026. We read every number on its source page that day and link to that page.
What we record. The number, what it measures, who measured it, when (the data period and the publication date where both are stated) and the sample size where the source gives it.
What we left out. Numbers that only appear in secondary reports, including reported user counts for Perplexity and Claude and press reports that ChatGPT reached 1 billion weekly users. We will add them when the company publishes them.
Conflicts. When two primary sources disagree, we show both and explain the difference in method.
Vendor studies. Several studies come from companies that sell SEO or AI visibility tools (Ahrefs, Semrush, SE Ranking, Prefer, Foundation, Seer). We name them so you can judge.
Update cadence: checked monthly. We re-open every source each month, update numbers that changed and replace figures older than 12 months when a newer primary source exists. Next check: December 2026.
More than 900 million people use ChatGPT every week, according to OpenAI's announcement of 27 February 2026. OpenAI also reported more than 50 million consumer subscribers and more than 9 million paying business users. In the US, 44% of adults say they use ChatGPT (Pew Research Center, February 2026, 5,119 adults).
What is ChatGPT's market share in 2026?
ChatGPT had 51.58% of AI chatbot use worldwide in October 2026, according to StatCounter, ahead of Gemini at 28.86% and Perplexity at 15.04%. Similarweb puts ChatGPT at about 53% of generative AI website visits in May 2026, down from about 76% in June 2025. The figures differ because they measure different things.
How many people use Google AI Overviews?
Google said on 19 May 2026 that AI Overviews had more than 2.5 billion monthly active users, up from more than 2 billion in July 2025. In July 2026 Google said AI Mode had passed 1 billion monthly active users. In the US, 60% of adults say they read AI summaries at the top of search results (Pew, February 2026).
Do AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites?
Yes, in the recent studies on this page. Pew Research Center saw people click a normal result on 8% of Google visits with an AI summary and 15% without one (March 2025). Ahrefs measured a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page when an AI Overview shows (300,000 keywords). Seer found brands cited in the Overview got 120% more organic clicks per impression than brands not cited, a correlation.
How much traffic do AI assistants send to websites?
Still a small share. SE Ranking found AI assistants sent 0.32% of all website traffic in 2026 (January to April), across 101,574 websites, up from 0.24% in 2025. ChatGPT sent 74.78% of that AI referral traffic. Demandbase saw monthly ChatGPT visits to B2B websites grow 303% between June 2025 and June 2026.
How often is this page updated?
Every month. This edition was checked on 1 November 2026, and the next check is in December 2026. We re-open each primary source, update changed numbers and replace anything older than 12 months when a newer primary source exists. Each row links to its source so you can check a number before you quote it.