AI Search Statistics: How People Use ChatGPT, Perplexity & Gemini to Buy
AI assistants are becoming a primary research channel for buyers. This hub collects the most useful numbers on AI search adoption and buying behavior, each with a named source and a link. It is updated monthly, and methodology caveats are noted where studies disagree.
Adoption & usage
ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly active users in February 2026, up from 800 million in October 2025.
OpenAI also reported 50 million paying subscribers at the same milestone.
Gartner predicted in 2024 that traditional search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026 as buyers shift queries to AI chatbots and assistants.
Gartner later clarified this is scenario modeling, not a measurement. Treat it as a directional forecast; observed search volume data has not confirmed a drop of this size.
Clicks & the zero-click shift
Google users clicked a traditional result on 8% of searches that showed an AI summary, versus 15% when no summary appeared.
The clearest independent evidence so far that AI answers roughly halve organic clicks on affected queries.
Only 1% of visits to a Google results page with an AI summary produced a click on a source link inside the summary itself.
Being cited inside an AI answer builds awareness and trust more than it drives direct traffic. Measure mentions and citations, not just sessions.
Users ended their browsing session entirely on 26% of search pages with an AI summary, versus 16% of pages with only traditional results.
AI referrals & buying
Traffic to U.S. retail websites from generative AI sources jumped 1,200% between July 2024 and February 2025.
Based on more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites measured through Adobe Analytics.
AI-sourced traffic to U.S. retail sites grew 393% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, with retail seeing the biggest gains of any industry Adobe tracks.
In May 2026, AI-referred traffic to retail sites was up 138% year over year, and AI-referred visitors generated 53% more revenue per visit than non-AI traffic.
A reversal from early 2025, when AI-referred visitors converted worse than average. AI referrals are now both growing and high intent.
Why these numbers matter
AI search is a measurement blind spot. Unlike classic search, there is no console showing which answers named your brand, so the industry leans on panel studies and analytics data to size the shift. The pattern across sources is consistent: fewer clicks on queries where an AI answers directly, and more high-intent visits from people an assistant has already convinced.
CitationWorks turns that blind spot into a measurement. We monitor what ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini actually say about brands every day, and we will add first-party numbers from that monitoring to this page as the dataset grows.
How to read stats on this page
Every number links to its source, with the study's date and scope where the source states them. Where studies disagree (for example, how often AI Overviews appear varies several-fold between trackers depending on keyword set and geography), we say so in the note instead of picking the biggest number.