AI search statistics 2026: the numbers that matter for Irish and UK companies

How to read these numbers

Every statistic below has a source link and a date. We label each source so you can judge it.

• Official Data or documentation from the platform itself, such as Google or Microsoft.
• Independent Academic research, or press reporting by a publisher with no product to sell in this market.
• Vendor research Research from a company that sells SEO, analytics, review or AI visibility products. Often good data, but the publisher has an interest in the finding.

Most figures are global or US-based. Irish data is scarce, so the last section says what applies here and labels our own spot checks as snapshots.

How many people use AI search in 2026?

• ChatGPT has 1 billion weekly users. It passed the mark in early August 2026. Source: Yahoo Tech, 6 August 2026. Independent
• The Gemini app has more than 1 billion monthly users. Source: Google, 11 August 2026. Official
• Google's AI Mode has more than 1 billion monthly users. Source: Alphabet Q2 2026 results. Official
• Google's AI Overviews have more than 2.5 billion monthly users. Source: CNBC, reporting Google's chief executive, 19 May 2026. Official

Which AI assistants are people switching between?

• ChatGPT's share of AI assistant web traffic fell from about 76% to about 53% in a year. Source: Similarweb, 29 July 2026. Vendor research
• Gemini's share rose to about 27%, and Claude's to about 9%. Same period. Source: Similarweb, 29 July 2026. Vendor research
• 63% of B2B software buyers use ChatGPT for software research, and 44% use Perplexity. Source: G2, 15 April 2026, a survey of 1,076 B2B decision-makers. Vendor research
• ChatGPT cites about 15 sources per answer, and Gemini about 3. Source: Semrush 2026 AI Visibility Index, 126 million US prompts, 26 June 2026. Vendor research

How much traffic does AI search send to websites?

• AI assistants send about 1% of website visits. Source: Similarweb, 3 September 2026. Vendor research
• AI referral traffic grew 117% year on year, and every industry at least doubled. Source: Similarweb, 3 September 2026. Vendor research

The traffic is small, but it isn't the point. The next two sections show where the decision actually happens.

Do AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites?

• The top-ranking result loses 58% of its clicks when an AI Overview appears. Source: Ahrefs, 18 May 2026. Vendor research
• Pages cited inside an AI Overview get 120% more clicks per impression than pages that aren't cited. Source: Seer Interactive, April 2026. Vendor research

How does AI change which brands buyers choose?

• 74% of users chose the brand the AI mentioned first as their final pick. Source: Semrush with Growth Memo, 20 July 2026. Vendor research
• Only 15% of categories had a clear leader in ChatGPT. That leaves most categories open. The study covered 1,094 US categories. Source: Semrush with Growth Memo, 20 July 2026. Vendor research
• In news and media, the top three brands hold 82.9% of AI visibility. In industrial categories, they hold 42.2%. Source: Semrush 2026 AI Visibility Index, 26 June 2026. Vendor research
• The chance of ChatGPT or Google's AI giving the same list of brands twice is under 1 in 100. The finding comes from 2,961 tests. Source: SparkToro, 28 January 2026. Vendor research
• 91% of citations appear in only one of ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI Overviews. Source: Growth Memo, 27 July 2026. Vendor research

How do B2B buyers use AI to build a shortlist?

• 51% of B2B software buyers now start research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google. That is up from 29% in April 2025. Source: G2, 15 April 2026, a survey of 1,076 B2B decision-makers in North America, EMEA and APAC. Vendor research
• 69% chose a different vendor than they had planned because of what an AI chatbot said. Source: G2, 15 April 2026. Vendor research
• One in three bought from a vendor they had never heard of before the AI recommended it. Source: G2, 15 April 2026. Vendor research
• Review sites (38%) now edge AI chatbots (37%) as the top influence on vendor shortlists. G2 also reports that a review-site citation is the most trusted signal inside an AI answer. Source: G2 Buyer Behavior Report, 22 July 2026. Vendor research
• The winning vendor is on the buyer's day-one shortlist 95% of the time. Source: 6sense 2025 Buyer Experience Report. Vendor research

Put together, being named in the AI answer is close to being on the shortlist. G2 is a review platform and 6sense sells B2B marketing software, so both have an interest in these findings.

Where do AI answers get their information?

• 84% of links cited by AI are earned media. Press releases are 1.1%, and paid or advertorial content is 0.3%. The analysis covered more than 25 million links. Source: Muck Rack, 7 May 2026. Vendor research
• YouTube mentions correlate with AI visibility at about 0.74, the strongest factor measured. Unlinked brand mentions correlate at about 0.66 to 0.71; Domain Rating at about 0.3. The study covered 75,000 brands. Source: Ahrefs, 12 December 2025. Vendor research
• ChatGPT search has run on OpenAI's own index since September 2026. It scrapes search results as a fallback and uses Bing mainly in Deep Research. Until then it leaned on Bing: in 2025, 87% of its citations matched Bing's top results. Source: Peec AI, 4 September 2026. Vendor research
• The share of AI Overview citations taken from Google's top 10 results fell from 76.1% in July 2025 to 38% in 2026. Ranking still helps, but most citations now come from further down. Source: Ahrefs, 2026 update. Vendor research
• Adding statistics, quotations and sources lifted visibility in generative answers by up to 40%, in a laboratory setting. A 2026 review of 45 studies found the gains hold only when the page is already in front of the model, and that rewrites aimed at citation can hurt retrieval. Source: GEO research paper, arXiv, November 2023; review, 15 July 2026. Independent
• 75% of pages cited by AI had been updated within the last year. More than a quarter were first published two or more years earlier: they stayed current by being maintained, not redated. Source: Seer Interactive, 24 July 2026. Vendor research
• Reddit's share of ChatGPT Search citations fell 86% in a week in August 2026, from 3.83% to 0.52%. ChatGPT had started scoping its background searches to specific sites. Reddit is still a leading source for Google AI Mode and Perplexity, where it holds 46.7% of Perplexity's top-10 citation share (Profound). Source: Promptwatch, 20 August 2026. Vendor research

What these numbers mean in practice, lever by lever, is in our AEO evidence ledger.

How is AI changing online shopping?

• About 65% of ChatGPT product picks now come from merchant feeds, up from 8% before 10 July 2026. The share jumped to 62% overnight on 10 July. Source: Profound data, via Relevant Audience, 11 September 2026. Vendor research
• After the switch, the top 10 stores' share of ChatGPT product references nearly doubled. Source: Profound data, via Relevant Audience, 11 September 2026. Vendor research
• About one in five previously visible merchants stopped appearing. Source: Profound data, via Relevant Audience, 11 September 2026. Vendor research
• 83% of ChatGPT's product carousel recommendations trace back to Google Shopping data. Source: Athos Commerce, 25 March 2026. Vendor research
• OpenAI scaled back ChatGPT's Instant Checkout on 24 March 2026. Merchants now reach ChatGPT through product feeds and their own checkout, and OpenAI's feed currently targets the US. Source: Digital Commerce 360, 24 March 2026; OpenAI feed specification. Independent

For a retailer, the product feed is now an AI visibility asset, not only an advertising one: Google Merchant Center with free listings for AI Mode and Gemini, Microsoft Merchant Center for Copilot, and OpenAI's feed where eligible.

Can marketers measure AI visibility yet?

• 45% of marketing leaders cannot measure their brand's visibility in AI answers. Only 9% have the tools to track everything they need. Source: Semrush, 26 June 2026. Vendor research
• 81% of teams running SEO and AI visibility together reported more traffic or leads from AI platforms, against 36% of teams working in silos. Source: Semrush, 26 June 2026. Vendor research
• Search Console's Generative AI performance report reached every site on 31 August 2026. It shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode combined, by page, country, date and device, but no clicks or queries. Source: Google Search Console Help and Search Engine Journal. Official
• GA4 added a default AI Assistant channel on 13 May 2026. Google's list names ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot and Grok, not Perplexity or Claude. Traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode stays in Organic Search, and the channel is not retroactive. Source: Google Analytics Help. Official
• Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report has been in public preview since February 2026. It shows a sample of citations in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, cited pages and grounding queries, with no clicks; query-to-page mapping followed on 23 March 2026. Source: Microsoft Advertising, 23 March 2026. Official

Which paid trackers fill the gap, and what they cost, is in our comparison of AI visibility tracking tools.

What do the numbers mean for Irish and UK companies?

Most AI search statistics are global or American. Irish data is scarce. Here's what we know applies here, sector by sector. Where we cite our own spot checks, they are single runs: snapshots, not measurements.

Ireland at a glance

• Google's AI Mode has been live in Ireland since October 2025. Source: The Irish Times, 8 October 2025.
• Google's checkout inside AI Mode covers the US, Canada and Australia only. Irish retailers can't take payment inside it. Source: Google Merchant Center Help. Official
• ChatGPT ads were not live in Ireland as of mid-July 2026. They are self-serve since May and shown only to Free and Go users, so they reach few B2B buyers. Check current availability before you plan a budget. Source: 3R Consulting. Vendor research

B2B software and services

G2's survey includes EMEA buyers, and the pattern fits Irish scale-ups selling abroad. The shortlist forms in the chatbot and on review sites. In Google's AI Overviews for software searches, Gartner Peer Insights, G2, Capterra, Software Advice and TrustRadius take 88% of review-platform citations (SE Ranking, January 2026). Those profiles, roundup positions and comparison pages carry more weight than they used to.

Online pharmacy, health and beauty

• Ireland's Common Conditions Service, launched in January 2026, has created a new set of questions about minor ailments and pharmacy treatment. In our research, AI assistants answer them poorly so far.
• In a HelloWorld spot check on 18 September 2026, answers to "best online pharmacy Ireland" were led by online-first independents, not the large pharmacy chains.
• We found no Irish AI leaderboard for online pharmacy. A UK one exists.
• Medicine promotion is tightly regulated. Article 90 of Directive 2001/83 restricts how medicines are promoted, and prescription-only medicines can't be sold online or advertised to the public in Ireland. Any AEO content for a pharmacy needs a compliance sign-off step.
• The shopping figures above apply to health and beauty retail. The feed is the route in.

Building products and construction

• Specifiers and trades already use AI for technical lookups, according to surveys from NBS and, for UK architects, RIBA.
• The new EU Construction Products Regulation pushes product data online anyway.
• In HelloWorld spot checks on 18 September 2026, several Irish builders' merchants' websites refused an AI-style request with a "403 Forbidden" error. That is a signal to check, not proof of blocking. Only server logs or CDN settings show whether verified AI crawlers are turned away.
• Several manufacturers still publish certificates, declarations of performance and environmental product declarations as PDFs only. Specification data in HTML is easier for AI assistants to read and quote.

UK companies

The same global patterns apply. Note that the Semrush index and the Semrush with Growth Memo study use US prompts, so treat them as direction rather than a UK benchmark.

When is this page updated?

Every quarter. The next scheduled review is December 2026. We replace figures when a newer study from the same source appears, and we date every change. If you spot a newer or better source, email hello@helloworld.ie.