90.82% of global search still happens on Google (Statista, December 2025). AI Overviews now reduce clicks to the top organic result by 58% (Ahrefs, December 2025). 99.6% of ChatGPT users still use Google (Similarweb, 2025).
Search is not dying. Search is shifting.
The original eight stats on this page are now outdated. A few are misleading. We are keeping them on the page exactly as published so any article still pointing to them resolves to the same source. Below them, we are giving you the 2026 numbers that actually describe how customers find a business now.
If you have read this post before, the eight stats you remember are still in here, exactly as written. The rest of the page is new.
A “search stat” in 2026 has to answer a different question than it did when this post was first published.
Not just “what share of clicks go to organic results,” but “what share of search queries are even looking for a click anymore.”
This post answers both, then tells you what to do about it.
Key Takeaways:
- Search is bigger and more concentrated than before. Google handles 90.82% of all global searches across every device, its highest dominance ever measured (Statista, December 2025). 83% of global consumers use Google and/or YouTube every day (Think with Google / Ipsos 2026).
- AI did not replace search. It reshaped the SERP. AI Overviews now appear on roughly 16% of all queries (Semrush, 2025) and reduce clicks to the top-ranking page by 58% when they show (Ahrefs, December 2025). 99.6% of ChatGPT users still use Google (Similarweb, 2025).
- The economics of organic search still favor you. Website / blog / SEO is the #1 ROI-generating channel cited by marketers in 2026 (HubSpot State of Marketing 2026). Small businesses are 23% more likely than average to see ROI from blog content (HubSpot 2026).
Why We Updated This Post
When we first published this article, search looked like a list of 10 blue links and a few paid ads. The eight stats we picked described that world.
Now an AI summary often answers the question before the blue links load. The link list is shorter. There are sidebars, video carousels, “People Also Ask,” map packs, and AI Overviews on top of all of it. Customers also use ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and YouTube as search engines, often as a complement to Google rather than a replacement.
The behavior changed. The numbers changed. The job that SEO does for your business did not.
We rebuilt this post in three parts. First, the original eight stats, preserved exactly as published. Second, the 2026 stats library: 30+ numbers across five themes that describe what is actually true now. Third, a Then vs Now table and a short action plan for what to do with the new reality.
Every number on this page is sourced. We pulled only from highly authoritative sources: Statista, Pew Research Center, Think with Google, Ahrefs, Semrush, Similarweb, and HubSpot.
The Original 8 (Preserved Snapshot)
Here are the eight stats this post originally featured, preserved verbatim. The “What we said” line under each one is the framing as it was published.
1. 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
What we said: search is the front door of the internet. If you are not visible there, you do not exist online.
2. Google owns 65-70% of the search engine market share.
What we said: optimizing for Google is optimizing for search.
3. 70% of the links search users click on are organic.
What we said: people trust earned results more than paid ones.
4. 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the organic results.
What we said: pure ad spend cannot replace ranking.
5. 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
What we said: page two is the second page of nothing.
6. Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%.
What we said: search is the engine. Social is the megaphone.
7. SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.
What we said: when a customer finds you with intent, they convert.
8. For Google, 18% of organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% of organic clicks go to the #2 position and 7% of organic clicks go to the #3 position.
What we said: rankings compound. Top three is everything.
The shape of those claims still holds. The numbers do not. Here is what is actually true now.
SEO Stats That Are Hard to Ignore in 2026
Five themes, 30+ stats. Each one is sourced inline. Pull what you need.
Theme 1: How People Actually Search Now
1. Google holds 90.82% of the global search engine market across all devices, the lowest share in over two decades (Statista, December 2025). The “lowest in two decades” framing matters: Google is the most dominant search engine on the planet, and it has slipped from above-95% peaks. The slip is real. The dominance is bigger than it was when our original stat said 65-70%.
2. Google holds 93.89% of the global mobile search engine market (Statista, January 2025). On the device most of your customers carry, Google is the search engine.
3. Bing holds 12.21% of the desktop search market worldwide (Statista, 2025). It is also the search engine that powers Microsoft Copilot. If your customers use Microsoft 365, Bing visibility now matters more than it did.
4. 83% of global consumers use Google and/or YouTube every day (Think with Google / Ipsos, 2026). YouTube is also a Google-owned property and a search engine in its own right. If you are visible only on Google.com, you are visible on the smaller half of Google.
5. AI Overviews now appear on roughly 16% of all search queries (Semrush AI Overviews Study, 2025). The share spiked to nearly 25% in mid-2025 and settled back near 16% by November. Plan for AI Overviews on roughly one in six queries you care about.
6. AI Overviews had over 1.5 billion users a month in Q1 2025 (Ahrefs analysis of 56 million AI Overviews, 2025). That is roughly one in four internet users on the planet exposed to AI-summarized search every month.
7. 88% of searches that trigger an AI Overview are informational queries (Semrush, 2025). Commercial and transactional searches still mostly show traditional results, with AI Overviews on a small but growing share. Translation: AI Overviews compete most with your blog content, less with your product pages.
8. 58.5% of US Google searches and 59.7% of EU searches end without a click (Datos / SparkToro research, cited by Semrush 2024). On informational queries like “things to do,” the zero-click rate hits 80% (Similarweb, 2025). The “75% never scroll past page 1” stat from the original 8 is now beside the point: most searches do not require scrolling at all.
9. 34% of US adults have used ChatGPT, about double the share in summer 2023 (Pew Research Center, June 2025). 58% of adults under 30 have used it. 28% of employed US adults have used ChatGPT for work, up from 8% in early 2023.
10. 95% of US adults have heard at least a little about AI; 47% have heard “a lot,” up from 26% in 2022 (Pew Research Center, September 2025). 62% of US adults interact with AI at least several times a week. 73% are willing to let AI assist with daily activities at least a little.
11. 99.6% of ChatGPT users still use Google (Similarweb, 2025). This is the single most important number on this list. AI assistants did not replace search. They added a layer on top of it.
12. ChatGPT became the 6th most-visited website in the world, growing 12% month over month (Similarweb, 2025). Generative AI monthly visits grew 76% year over year. AI app downloads were up 319% year over year. AI platforms generated over 1.1 billion referral visits in June 2025, a 357% year-over-year jump.
13. 35% of Gen Z in the US use AI chatbots to search for information (Semrush, 2025-2026). Users 45 and older now account for nearly 30% of generative AI usage (Similarweb, 2025). The early-adopter window has closed.
14. After their first ChatGPT session, US users’ Google Search activity went up slightly, not down (Semrush analysis of 260 billion clickstream rows, August 2025). The data tested two hypotheses, substitution vs expansion. Expansion won. People search more, in more places, and Google still gets its share.
15. Average web traffic from search has dropped 21% over the past year (Ahrefs, 2025). The pie is shrinking even as Google’s share holds, because zero-click and AI Overviews keep users on the SERP.
Theme 2: Where the Clicks Go on a Modern SERP
16. AI Overviews correlate with a 58% lower clickthrough rate for the top-ranking page (Ahrefs, December 2025 update, 300,000-keyword study). The earlier April 2025 study found 34.5%. The drop got worse. If you rank #1 on a query that triggers an AI Overview, expect roughly half the clicks you used to get.
17. 96.98% of clicks still happen in the top 10 search results (Ahrefs, 2025). The “top 10” rule from the original 8 stat is more true than ever, with one caveat: clicks now go to fewer of the top 10. Position 1 takes the hit when AI Overviews appear, and the rest of the page splits the rest.
18. 54.29% of impressions on Google’s first page on desktop, 76% on mobile (Ahrefs, 2025). On a phone, three out of four searches never even see page two.
19. When an AI summary appears, only 8% of users click the regular search results below it. Without an AI summary, 15% click (Semrush, 2025). Cutting the click rate roughly in half is the visible cost of an AI Overview.
20. 26% of searches with AI summaries end without any additional clicks. For traditional results, that number is 16% (Semrush, 2025). AI Overviews increase zero-click search by roughly 60% on the queries where they appear.
21. Only 19% of users click through to the sources cited inside AI Overviews (Semrush, 2025). Being cited as a source is real visibility, but it is not the click magnet it sounds like.
22. Sites that appear AS A SOURCE in AI Overviews see CTR rise from 0.6% to 1.08% across 7,800+ queries (Semrush, 2025). The boost is real and small. Worth optimizing for, not worth betting your traffic plan on.
23. 76% of AI Overview citations are pulled from pages already ranking in Google’s top 10 (Ahrefs, 2025). The single most reliable way to get cited by an AI Overview is to rank in Google’s top 10 on the same query. Old SEO rules still pay.
24. Across the major AI assistants, source overlap with Google’s top 10 varies widely. Perplexity overlaps Google’s top 10 on 91% of domains and 82% of URLs. Google’s own AI Overviews overlap on 86% of domains and 67% of URLs. ChatGPT overlaps least: only 6.82% of ChatGPT results match Google’s top 10, and 83% of ChatGPT answers cite URLs not in Google at all (Semrush AI Mode Study and Ahrefs, 2025). Different assistants reward different content.
25. 28% of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages have ZERO organic visibility in Google search (Ahrefs, 2025). If your only SEO target is Google rankings, you are missing roughly a third of the surface ChatGPT actually pulls from.
26. 45.7% of all Google searches are branded queries (Ahrefs, 2025). Brand demand is half the search market. The marketing assets that build brand recognition now feed both your direct-to-site traffic AND your search traffic.
Theme 3: SEO and Content as a Business Investment
27. Website / blog / SEO is the #1 ROI-generating channel cited by marketers in 2026, followed by paid social media at 26% (HubSpot State of Marketing Report, 2026). The premise of our original “14.6% close rate” stat still holds. The exact number changed. The relative position did not.
28. Small businesses are 23% more likely than average to see ROI from blog posts (HubSpot State of Marketing Report, 2026). Blog content has the highest payoff at the size of business we serve.
29. Blog posts ranked among the top 5 highest-ROI content formats at 22.26% (HubSpot, 2026). Blogs sit alongside short-form video, long-form video, and live-streaming video at the top of the ROI table. Each does a different job. None of them does the others’ job.
30. Over 92% of marketers plan on or are already using SEO optimization for traditional and AI-powered search engines (HubSpot State of Marketing Report, 2026). 41% of marketers say their top exploration trend is updating SEO strategy for changes in search.
31. Nearly 30% of marketers report decreased search traffic as consumers turn to AI tools (HubSpot, 2026). The trend is real. The fix is not to abandon SEO. The fix is to make sure the work you do shows up in both surfaces.
32. About 70% of businesses report higher ROI from using AI in SEO (Semrush, 2026). The teams winning are not the ones doing SEO without AI or AI without SEO. They are doing both.
33. 87% of marketers use AI to help create content (Ahrefs, 2025). 51% of companies plan to increase spend on AI-generated content. Marketers using AI publish 42% more content (median 17 articles per month vs 12 without).
34. 61% of marketers believe marketing is experiencing its biggest disruption in 20 years because of AI (HubSpot, 2026). 79% of marketing teams expect at least a slight budget increase in 2026.
Theme 4: What Ranks Now (Content, Freshness, Brand)
35. The average word count of pages cited in AI Overviews is 1,282 words. The average for pages ranking on Google’s organic top results is 1,188 words (Ahrefs analysis of 174,000 AI Overview citations, December 2025). The Spearman correlation between word count and citation is 0.04. Essentially zero.
36. 53.4% of pages cited by AI Overviews are under 1,000 words. Only 16% are over 2,000 (Ahrefs, December 2025). Long-form content is fine. Short, focused content is fine. The “you must write a 3,000-word post to rank” rule was never true and is even less true now.
37. AI search platforms cite content that is 25.7% fresher than content cited in traditional Google organic results (Ahrefs, 2025). 76.4% of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages were updated in the last 30 days.
38. Brands in the top 25% for web mentions earn over 10x more AI Overview mentions than the next quartile (Ahrefs, 2025). The top 50 brands appearing in AI Overviews account for 28.9% of all citations. 26% of brands have ZERO AI Overview mentions. Brand and authority compound at the AI layer the same way they always did at the SEO layer.
39. 86.5% of content in Google’s top 20 search results is at least partially AI-generated (Ahrefs, 2025). 91.4% of content cited in AI Overviews is at least partially AI-generated. Search engines are not penalizing AI-assisted content. They are ranking it.
40. AI bots now account for 25% of all web crawl requests, second only to traditional search engine bots (Ahrefs, 2025). One in four hits on your site is from a model trying to learn what you sell.
41. About 40% of websites pass all Core Web Vitals thresholds; 78% of websites use some form of schema/structured markup (Addy Osmani research and W3 Tech via Ahrefs, 2025). Technical SEO is no longer optional table stakes. It is a meaningful differentiator from the 60% who still fail.
Theme 5: Local + Mobile (the Layer Most Small Businesses Live On)
42. Smartphones account for over 78% of retail website visits worldwide (Statista via HubSpot, 2025). 63% of consumers prefer to find information about brands and products on mobile devices (HubSpot State of Consumer Trends 2024). The phone is the storefront.
43. 23% of all global retail sales now happen via e-commerce (Statista via HubSpot, 2025). Almost a quarter of every dollar customers spend on physical goods is happening online.
44. 42% of millennials who perform a local search visit the business most of the time (ReviewTrackers research via Semrush, 2025). Local search is intent. Intent converts.
45. Over 20% of global internet users 16+ use voice assistants to find information (DataReportal via HubSpot, 2025). Voice assistant usage on smartphones is forecast to rise to 48.7% of internet users by 2029 (eMarketer via HubSpot, 2026). 73.7% of marketers plan to maintain or increase voice search investment (HubSpot, 2026).
Then vs Now: The Five That Changed Everything
| Then (the original snapshot) | Now (2026) |
|---|---|
| Google owns 65-70% of the search engine market share | 90.82% global market share, the highest dominance ever measured (Statista, December 2025) |
| 75% of users never scroll past the first page | 96.98% of clicks still happen in the top 10, but AI Overviews answer ~16% of queries before the user scrolls (Ahrefs, Semrush, 2025) |
| 70% of clicks go to organic results | When an AI Overview appears, only 8% of users click the regular results, vs 15% without one (Semrush, 2025) |
| 18% of organic clicks go to position #1 | AI Overviews correlate with a 58% lower CTR for the top-ranking page (Ahrefs, December 2025, 300K keyword study) |
| Search beats social by more than 300% as a traffic driver | 83% of global consumers use Google and/or YouTube every day; 99.6% of ChatGPT users still use Google (Think with Google, Similarweb) |
What Changed and What Did Not
Three things changed
1. The SERP got crowded above the link list. AI Overviews, “People Also Ask,” related searches, video carousels, and discussion blocks now sit between the user and the ten blue links. The blue links did not disappear. They just have a smaller share of the page.
2. Search expanded beyond Google. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews, and Google’s AI Mode are real surfaces where customers ask questions. They overlap with Google heavily, but they are not the same. Different assistants reward different content. Brand mentions, authority, and content freshness drive AI visibility more than they ever drove organic ranking.
3. Zero-click is the default for informational searches. “What time does the post office open” gets answered above the fold. “Things to do near me” gets answered in the map pack. The clicks that used to spread across position 1 to 10 increasingly stay on the SERP.
Two things did not change
1. Top of the search results still wins. 96.98% of all clicks happen in the top 10 (Ahrefs, 2025). 76% of AI Overview citations come from pages already ranking in Google’s top 10 (Ahrefs, 2025). The fastest path to AI visibility is the same as the fastest path to traditional visibility. Earn rankings.
2. SEO still pays. Website / blog / SEO is the #1 ROI-driving channel cited by marketers in the 2026 State of Marketing report. Small businesses are 23% more likely than average to see ROI from blog content (HubSpot, 2026). The original 14.6% close-rate stat is dated. The economic logic underneath it, customers who find you with intent buy more often, is the same now as it was when this post was originally published.
What This Means for Your Business in 2026
Five concrete moves, in order.
- Stop measuring search in clicks alone. Track impressions, AI Overview appearances, mentions in AI assistants, branded search volume, and direct traffic alongside organic clicks. A drop in clicks with a rise in impressions and brand searches is winning, not losing.
- Earn the top 10 on the queries that matter, in plain English. 76% of AI Overview citations come from the top 10. 96.98% of clicks still go there. The fastest way to be visible to AI is to be visible on Google. Pick 20 commercial queries. Earn the top 10 on as many as you can. The same work pays in two surfaces.
- Make your business name appear on the third-party sites your customers already trust. Brands in the top 25% for web mentions get 10x more AI Overview citations (Ahrefs, 2025). Reviews, podcast guesting, partner blog posts, customer case studies on industry sites, and a few targeted PR mentions per quarter compound at the AI layer the same way backlinks compound at the SEO layer.
- Update your evergreen pages on a schedule, not when you feel like it. AI assistants prefer content that is 25.7% fresher than what Google ranks (Ahrefs, 2025). 76.4% of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages were updated in the last 30 days. Pick the 10 pages that drive the most search traffic. Refresh and stamp them every 60 to 90 days.
- Treat your structured assets like SEO assets. Your ICP file, brand voice guide, design system, offer sheet, FAQ schema, and customer review corpus are now SEO infrastructure. Search agents and AI assistants both read what is on your site, what is structured, and what is fresh. The 10 marketing assets in our Brand Brain framework are the same files that feed AI agents and the same files that feed SEO performance.
Frequently Asked Questions About SEO
Some are. Most are not. The shape of the claims still holds: search dominates, organic results outperform paid for trust, and ranking position drives clicks. The exact percentages have all shifted. Google’s market share is now 90.82% (up from the 65-70% in the original). AI Overviews now reduce top-position CTR by 58% (Ahrefs, December 2025), making the original “18% of organic clicks go to position 1” stat outdated. We have preserved the original eight verbatim above so existing citations still resolve, and added the 2026 numbers below them.
Yes. Website / blog / SEO is the #1 ROI-driving channel cited in HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report. Small businesses are 23% more likely than average to see ROI from blog content. Even with zero-click rates above 58% in the US, the searches that DO produce clicks still convert at far higher rates than paid traffic. SEO economics are different in 2026, but they still favor the businesses that show up.
The good news: 76% of AI Overview citations come from pages already ranking in Google’s top 10 (Ahrefs, 2025). The fastest path to AI visibility is still the fastest path to organic visibility, earn the top rankings on Google. The new news: brand mentions, content freshness, and structured data matter more than ever, because AI assistants weight authority and recency heavily. The teams that win at AI search are the same teams that win at traditional SEO, with one extra discipline: they update their important pages on a 60-to-90-day cycle.
It might. Average web traffic from search dropped 21% year-over-year (Ahrefs, 2025). The fix is not to do less SEO. The fix is to (a) measure differently, (b) earn more visibility per query through both rankings and AI Overview citations, and (c) get more leverage out of every visit by capturing email subscribers, building review and brand demand, and turning visitors into trackable contacts. Your goal is no longer “more clicks.” Your goal is “more customers from the same or fewer clicks.”
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) are the labels for optimizing content to appear in AI assistants and AI-generated answers. In practice, the playbook overlaps with SEO heavily, since 76% of AI Overview citations come from Google’s top 10 (Ahrefs, 2025) and Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and ChatGPT all draw substantially from the open web. The differences: AI assistants weight content freshness, brand mentions across the web, structured data, and clear, factual writing more than traditional SEO does. The right framing is not “SEO is dead, learn GEO.” The right framing is: “SEO is the foundation. GEO is what you add on top.”
It depends on what you can do well in-house. Marketers using AI now publish 42% more content than those who do not (Ahrefs, 2025), and 87% of marketers use AI to help create content. AI lowered the cost of producing decent content, which raised the bar on what stands out. If you can credibly produce one solid piece of content per week, optimize for both search and AI assistants, and earn a few authoritative mentions per quarter, you can run lean. If you cannot, working with a partner who treats your marketing assets as a system (rather than producing one-off blog posts) will outperform DIY.
Nothing changes. We did not move the URL or change the slug. Every existing link to this page continues to resolve to this page. The original eight stats are preserved verbatim above so any article quoting “75% of users never scroll past the first page” still finds its source. The page just now has 30+ additional 2026 stats, a Then vs Now table, and an action plan attached underneath.
Build the Foundation. Pick Your Path.
Search is shifting, not shrinking. AI search is layered on top of search, not a replacement for it. The businesses winning at both are doing the same thing: building a structured set of marketing assets that feed every channel, including search, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, email, social, and sales. Same files. Different surfaces.
If you want to build that foundation yourself, our companion piece walks you through the 10 marketing assets every business needs to be AI-ready, with a free starter repo at imforza.link/m10.
If you would rather we audit what you have and recommend what to build next, book a free Marketing Asset Audit with our team. We will look at your current site, content, schema, and search visibility, then map a concrete plan for moving up in both Google and AI search over the next 90 days.
Want to explore what an entire marketing system can do for your business?
This is what we do and we’d love to paint this picture with you. Schedule a complimentary consultation with our team today and get a full plan with next steps by the next day.
Last updated: May 7, 2026. We refresh this post on a ~90-day cadence. The original eight stats are preserved as published. The 2026 numbers above them are sourced from Statista, Pew Research Center, Think with Google, Ahrefs, Semrush, Similarweb, and HubSpot.
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