AI search statistics UK 2026: adoption, zero clicks, ad costs and AI referrals

The AI search statistics that matter in 2026, verified to their sources: 54% of UK adults now use AI tools such as ChatGPT (Ofcom), around 30% of UK keyword search queries show an AI Overview (Ofcom), 68% of US Google searches end without a single click (SparkToro), and visitors referred by AI assistants converted 31% better than other traffic last holiday season (Adobe Analytics). Every figure on this page is named to its source and dated, and the page is re-verified quarterly. Figures verified 7 August 2026; UK B2B AI Overview study added 17 August 2026.

UK adoption of AI search

• 54% of UK adultsuse AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini, rising to 79% of 16 to 24 year olds. Ofcom, Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes, April 2026.
• 1.8 billion UK visits to ChatGPT between January and August 2025, around five times the same period of 2024, with 252 million visits in August 2025 alone. Ofcom, Online Nation, December 2025.
• Roughly 30% of UK Google searches now show an AI Overview, and 53% of UK adults say they see AI summaries often. Google is still used by 82% of UK adults, about 3 billion searches a month. Ofcom, Online Nation, December 2025.
• Around half of US adults now use AI chatbots, about 40% use them for information searching, and 24% use them daily. Pew Research Center, June 2026.

The scale of the AI engines

• More than 900 million people use ChatGPT weekly, with over 50 million paying subscribers. OpenAI, February 2026.
• 2.5 billion prompts a day were already being sent to ChatGPT by mid-2025. For scale, Google handles roughly 14 billion searches a day. OpenAI via TechCrunch, July 2025.
• 2 billion people a month see Google AI Overviews, across 200+ countries. Google, Q2 2025 earnings call.
• Google searches in Safari fell for the first time in 22 yearsin April 2025, which Apple’s services chief attributed to AI under oath. Google disputes the interpretation and says total queries keep growing. US antitrust testimony, May 2025.

Zero clicks: searches that end on the results page

• 68% of US Google searches ended without a single click to any website in early 2026, up from 58.5% measured in 2024. The two studies use different data panels, so treat the exact gap as directional; the direction is not in doubt. SparkToro, June 2026 and July 2024.
• People click a traditional result on just 8% of searches where Google shows an AI summary, versus 15% without one, and click a source cited inside the AI answer only 1% of the time. Pew Research Center, watching 68,879 real searches, July 2025.
• 26% of searches that meet an AI summary end the browsing session entirely, versus 16% for traditional results. Pew Research Center, July 2025.

What AI Overviews do to organic clicks

• Position one loses 34.5% of its click-through rate when an AI Overview is present: 2.6% against 4.0% for similar informational queries without one, March 2025. On the AI Overview queries themselves, position-one CTR fell from 7.3% to 2.6% year on year. Ahrefs, 300,000 keywords, April 2025.
• Brands not cited in the AI Overview averaged 0.94% organic CTR on those queries across 2.43 billion impressions; brands cited in the answer more than doubled that, at 2.07%. Being the cited answer now does what position one used to. Seer Interactive, April 2026.
• Comparison-style queries trigger AI Overviews 95.4% of the time, question-format queries 85.9%, transactional queries only 5%. Seer Interactive, April 2026.
• Our own UK B2B measurement: on 17 August 2026 we ran 304 hand-written UK B2B queries through Google and recorded which showed an AI Overview, split by intent (what is, how to, comparison, supplier, pricing, near me, brand). Full table, method and caveats: AI Overviews and click-through rates for small UK B2B.
• MailOnline’s number-one rankings lose over half their desktop clicks when an AI Overview appears (about 13% CTR down to under 5%), their SEO director told a publishing conference. Press Gazette, May 2025.
• Business Insider’s organic search traffic fell 55%between April 2022 and April 2025; HuffPost’s halved over three years. Similarweb data via the Wall Street Journal, June 2025.

The cost of buying clicks instead

• Average Google Ads search CPC is $5.42, more than double the $2.32 of 2016. WordStream benchmarks from 13,474 US campaigns, May 2026.
• CPC rose 12.88% in a single year in the 2025 benchmarks, with average cost per lead at $70.11. WordStream, 2025.
• Google’s own SEC filing reports search cost-per-click up 7% year on year. Alphabet Form 10-Q, Q3 2025.
• The honest caveat: the 2026 benchmarks show cost per lead falling for the first time in five years as conversion rates improved. Costs are structurally higher; the latest year partially recovered. WordStream, 2026.

What AI-referred visitors are worth

• AI referrals to retail sites converted 31% better than other traffic in the 2025 holiday season, with revenue per visit up 254% year on year, having converted 9% worse as recently as February 2025. Adobe Analytics, January 2026.
• The average AI-search visitor is worth 4.4x a traditional organic visitor by conversion rate. Semrush research, June 2025.
• AI influenced about 20% of global online sales ($262 billion) over the 2025 holiday season, and AI-powered search traffic converted 9x more often than social referrals. Salesforce, January 2026.
• AI platforms sent 1.13 billion referralsto the top 1,000 websites in June 2025, up 357% in a year, though still under 1% of Google’s referral volume. Similarweb, July 2025.

The prediction that set the agenda

In February 2024, Gartner predicted traditional search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026. The honest 2026 scorecard: the magnitude was wrong, the direction was right. Aggregate search volume did not collapse; instead the AI moved inside the results page, and the clicks collapsed instead. The numbers above are what that looks like measured.

How to use these numbers

If you quote a figure, quote its source and date: several of these studies use different panels and methods, and vendor numbers (Semrush, Adobe, Salesforce) should be treated as directional. Quote the date with the number: half the bad takes in this niche are 2024 figures dressed up as current. For the full argument these statistics add up to, read why your SEO isn’t working. To find out what the AI engines say about your own business, the free AEO score checks all six, no card, no signup.