GEO statistics for 2026 (AI search & AI Overviews)
Updated June 2026 · Every figure is attributed to a named source with a link.
Generative engine optimization matters because AI search is now mainstream: Google AI Overviews reach 2 billion monthly users, ChatGPT has over 800 million weekly users, and about 18% of Google searches already return an AI summary — which cite three or more sources 88% of the time. Below are key GEO and AI-search statistics for 2026, each attributed to a named source.
AI search adoption & reach
monthly users of Google AI Overviews, now available in 200+ countries and territories.
monthly active users of Google's AI Mode (conversational AI search) in the US and India.
weekly active users of ChatGPT as of October 2025.
Perplexity queries in May 2025 (~26M/day), growing more than 20% month over month.
of US adults have used ChatGPT — about double the 2023 share (58% among under-30s).
AI Overviews prevalence
of Google searches generated an AI summary (AI Overview) in Pew's 2025 study of 68,879 searches.
share of queries showing an AI Overview across 2025 — rising to a ~25% July peak, then settling below 16% (10M-keyword study).
Clicks, citations & zero-click
click-through to a traditional result when an AI summary appears, versus when it does not.
of visits to pages with an AI summary resulted in a click on a link inside the summary.
of Google AI summaries cite three or more sources; the median summary runs 67 words.
average CTR for the #1 result when an AI Overview is present, across 300,000 keywords.
of US Google searches end without a click to the open web (zero-click).
AI referral traffic & behavior
growth in US retail traffic from generative-AI sources (Feb 2025 vs July 2024).
AI-referred shoppers browse 12% more pages per visit and bounce 23% less than other channels.
of trackable large-language-model referral traffic to websites comes from ChatGPT (6.77M sessions).
Looking for more? See our marketing statistics hub or the full 2026 marketing statistics roundup.