A.I. Search Stats for 2025: Everything You Need to Know

We’ve read and analyzed lots of studies on the emerging fields of AI Search, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), AI Search Engine Optimization (AI SEO), LLM-AI user behavior, and Generative AI systems to produce this list of statistics and facts every marketer should know. The following data comes from leading brands and thought leaders in the AI Search / LLM-AI / GenAI space including Profound, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Local Falcon, Tollbit, and our team here at Joe Youngblood SEO & Digital Marketing Consulting. Understanding LLM-AI systems and how consumers use them may be critical for the near-future of fields such as SEO, Local SEO, and Ecommerce SEO as consumers explore the possibilities and discover the differences of these systems with more traditional searching and their limitations.

It is our hope that this list will help journalists, marketers, AI researchers, students, and even tech startup founders better understand these emerging worlds.

Most Interesting A.I. Search & Usage Statistics

• AI search drives less than 1% of traffic to websites (Tollbit)
• 71.63% of American consumers are able to correctly identify GenAI created photos and graphics (Joe Youngblood SEO & Digital Marketing Consulting)
• 51% of domains appearing in Google’s AI Mode overlap with [i.e. are the same as] those in Google’s Search Results (SEMrush)
• ChatGPT makes up 83% of AI search traffic to websites (Ahrefs)
• ChatGPT gets about 2.5 billion prompts per day (Tech Crunch)

Statistics and Facts About A.I. Search / A.I. SEO

• AI search drives less than 1% of traffic to websites (Tollbit)
• AI Search Engines (i.e. Perplexity, etc…) have a CTR of 0.74% (Tollbit)
• AI Chat Bot systems (i.e. ChatGPT, Claude, etc…) have a CTR of 0.33% (Tollbit)
• AI Search Engines send 91% less clicks than Google (Tollbit)
• AI Chat Bot systems send 96% less clicks than Google (Tollbit)
• The amount of traffic coming from Google’s AI Overviews to websites is unknown because Google refuses to track it (observation)
• Google launched AI Overviews in the USA on May 14th of 2024 (Search Engine Roundtable)
• After introducing Google’s AI Overviews a large number of websites and SEOs reported an “alligator mouth” effect forming between Impressions in Google which were climbing and Clicks from Google which were declining (Search Engine Roundtable)
• Darwin Santos named this alligator mouth phenomenon “the Great Decoupling” a name which is now used in the SEO community (Search Engine Roundtable)
• In April of 2025 Google was caught linking to other search queries inside of the AI Overviews, essentially taking content and clicks from publishers and pushing users to not leave Google (Search Engine Roundtable)
• Google launched AI Mode in the USA on May 20th, 2025 (Search Engine Land)
• Users click on links in search 46.66% less when an AI Overview is present in the Google SERPs (Pew Research)
• Users are 62.5% more likely to leave the SERPs without clicking after just one search when an AI Overview is present (Pew Research)
• 2/3rds (66.66%) of all Google uses result in the user continuing to browse or Google or leaving the search engine without clicking a link, only 1/3rd (33.33%) result in a click away from Google this stayed the same regardless of the presence of AI Overviews or not (Pew Research)
• 18% of all Google searches in March of 2025 resulted in an AI Overview being displayed at the top (Pew Research)
• 88% of AI Overviews on Google show 3 or more sources (Pew Research)
• 1% of AI Overviews on Google show only 1 source (Pew Research)
• 60% of Google queries that start with question words such as ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘how’, and ‘why’ show an AI Overview (Pew Research)
• 80.41% of links cited by AI systems are on .COM domains (Profound)
• 11.29% of links cited by AI systems are on .ORG domains (Profound)
• 2.16% of links cited by AI systems are on .UK domains (Profound)
• 1.67% of links cited by AI systems are on .IO domains (Profound)
• 1.13% of links cited by AI systems are on .AI domains (Profound)
• 1.01% of links cited by AI systems are on .NET domains (Profound)
• 0.97% of links cited by AI systems are on .CO domains (Profound)
• 0.52% of links cited by AI systems are on .AU domains (Profound)
• 0.45% of links cited by AI systems are on .BR domains (Profound)
• 0.39% of links cited by AI systems are on .CA domains (Profound)
• 51% of domains appearing in Google’s AI Mode overlap with [i.e. are the same as] those in Google’s Search Results (SEMrush)
• 92% of Google’s AI Mode feature a side bar with links (SEMrush)
• When Google’s AI Mode shows links below the response there is an 89% overlap with domains that rank highly in Google on related queries (SEMrush)
• Commercial queries in Google’s AI Mode get a response that is 2x longer than informational queries (SEMrush)
• Google’s AI Overview citations have an 85.79% overlap rate with domains that rank highly on related queries (SEMrush)
• Google’s AI Mode shows more unique domains as references than ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overviews (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Reddit is the single most cited website across all LLMs at 40.11% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Wikipedia is the second most cited website across all LLMs at 26.33% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data YouTube is the third most cited website across all LLMs at 23.52% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Google(.com) is the fourth most cited website across all LLMs at 23.28% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Yelp is the fifth most cited website across all LLMs at 21.01% of citations and the most cited website solely focused on local businesses (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Facebook is the sixth most cited website across all LLMs at 19.96% of citations and the most cited social media website (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Amazon is the seventh most cited website across all LLMs at 18.72% of citations and the most cited ecommerce website (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data TripAdvisor is the eighth most cited website across all LLMs at 12.46% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data MapBox is tied as the ninth most cited website across all LLMs at 11.29% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data OpenStreetMap is tied as the ninth most cited website across all LLMs at 11.29% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Instagram is the tenth most cited website across all LLMs at 10.89% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data MapQuest is the eleventh most cited website across all LLMs at 9.76% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Walmart is the twelfth most cited website across all LLMs at 9.32% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data eBay is the thirteenth most cited website across all LLMs at 7.74% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data LinkedIn is the fourteenth most cited website across all LLMs at 5.90% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Quora is the fifteenth most cited website across all LLMs at 4.60% of citations and the only website focused on Q and A style content to make their list (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data HomeDepot is the sixteenth most cited website across all LLMs at 4.56% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Yahoo! is the seventeenth most cited website across all LLMs at 4.40% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Target is the eighteenth most cited website across all LLMs at 4.33% of citations (SEMrush)
• According to SEMrush data Pinterest is the nineteenth most cited website across all LLMs at 4.22% of citations (SEMrush)
• The number of AI search citations a domain has appears highly correlated to that domain’s top 10 Google rankings (SEMrush)
• ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, and Google Gemini all tend to pull citations for their AI systems from URLs that rank in Google beyond page 2 (position 21+) for related queries (SEMrush)
• 40% of Local Searches on Google displayed an AI Overview in May of 2025 (Local Falcon)
• 58% of Informational intent local searches displayed an AI Overview on Google in May of 2025 (Local Falcon)
• 17.02% of Commercial intent local searches displayed an AI Overview on Google in May of 2025 (Local Falcon)
• 10.50% of Navigational intent local searches displayed an AI Overview on Google in May of 2025 (Local Falcon)
• Service industry queries are the most likely local searches to trigger a Google AI Overview with rates as high as 65.00%
• In June of 2025 Google’s AI Overviews appeared for 15% of queries (SEMrush)
• Reddit is the most cited source by Perplexity at 46.7% of citations (Profound)
• Reddit is the most cited source by Google’s AI Overviews at 21.0% of citations (Profound)
• Wikipedia is the most cited source by ChatGPT at 7.9% of citations (Profound)
• YouTube is the second most cited source by Perplexity at 13.9% of citations (Profound)
• YouTube is the second most cited source by Google at 18.8% of citations (Profound)
• Reddit is the second most cited source by ChatGPT at 11.3% of citations (Profound)
• Gartner is the third most cited source by Perplexity at 7.0% of citations (Profound)
• Quora is the third most cited source by Google at 14.3% of citations (Profound)
• Forbes is the third most cited source by ChatGPT at 6.8% of citations (Profound)
• Reddit is the most cited source across ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity at 79% of all citations (Profound)
• Wikipedia is the second most cited source across ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity at 53.6% of citations (Profound)
• YouTube is the third most cited source across ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity at 32.7% of citations (Profound)
• ChatGPT makes up 83% of AI search traffic to websites (Ahrefs)
• Traffic from AI systems to websites grew 9.7x between 2025 and 2025 (Ahrefs)
• AI search send more traffic to the web in general than Reddit or LinkedIn at 0.198% of all traffic (Ahrefs)
• ChatGPT sends the most traffic to the web of all AI systems at 0.165% (Ahrefs)
• ChatGPT search traffic to websites grew 85% between January and June of 2025 (Ahrefs)
• Perplexity makes up 10% of AI search traffic to websites (Ahrefs)
• Microsoft Copilot makes up 4% of AI search traffic to websites (Ahrefs)
• All other AI search systems make up 3% of AI search traffic to websites (Ahrefs)
• Independent news publisher Toxigon is a top 10 source for ChatGPT at 4.1% of citations (Profound)
• Forbes is an important source for ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity at 17.1% of all citations (Profound)
• NerdWallet is an important source for ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity at 15.5% of citations (Profound)
• LinkedIn is an important source for Google and Perplexity at 18.3% of citations on those 2 platforms (Profound)
• Gartner is an important source for Google AI Overviews and Perplexity at 14.1% of citations on those 2 platforms (Profound)
• G2 is an important source for ChatGPT and Perplexity at 10.7% of citations on those 2 platforms (Profound)
• Business Insider is an important source for ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews at 9.4% of citations on those 2 platforms (Profound)
• Yelp is only an important source for Perplexity at 5.8% of citations (Profound)
• TechRadar is only an important source for ChatGPT at 5.5% of citations (Profound)
• NY Post is only an important source for ChatGPT at 4.4% of citations (Profound)
• Reuters is only an important source for ChatGPT at 3.4% of citations (Profound)
• Medium is only an important source for Google’s AI Overviews at 3.9% of citations (Profound)
• TripAdvisor is only an important source for Perplexity at 4.1% of citations (Profound)
• PC Mag is only an important source for Perplexity at 3.7% of citations (Profound)
• 32.7% of ChatGPT user queries are Informational in intent (Profound)
• 9.5% of ChatGPT user queries are Commercial in intent (Profound)
• 6.1% of ChatGPT user queries are Transactional in intent (Profound)
• 2.1% of ChatGPT user queries are Navigational in intent (Profound)
• 49.6% of ChatGPT user queries have no search intent or are Generative in intent (Profound)

Statistics and Facts About Generative AI

• 71.63% of American consumers are able to correctly identify GenAI created photos and graphics (Joe Youngblood SEO & Digital Marketing Consulting)
• 37.5% of ChatGPT user queries have Generative intent only (i.e. they want to ask the AI to make something for them) (Profound)
• Publishers having their content automatically rewritten are big losers with GenAI usage (observation)
• Stock image, photo, and video providers are likely also big losers with GenAI usage (observation)
• Custom image, photo, and video providers are likely also big losers with GenAI usage (observation)
• SEO copywriting, copywriters, ghost writers, journalists, and other professional writers may see fewer opportunities with GenAI usage (observation)

Facts About AI Respecting of Robots.txt

• Anthropic, makers of Claude, respect a Robots.txt block for all LLM uses including training, scraping, and mixing or duplicating content. (Anthropic)
• OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT, respects a Robots.txt block only for model pre-training. (OpenAI)
• OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT, ignores Robots.txt for “user actions”. (Joe Youngblood)
• Meta, makers of Meta AI / Ask Meta / Llama, respect Robots.txt block only for model pre-training. (Meta)
• Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) may ignore Robots.txt for “user initiated behavior”. (Meta)
• Perplexity doesn’t state specifically how they crawl to get data for model pre-training and provide no mechanism to stop this behavior. (Perplexity)
• Perplexity’s search crawler, PerplexityBot, does respect Robots.txt blocking for search indexing but states this is not used for model pre-training. (Perplexity)
• Perplexity’s user action crawler, Perplexity-user, claims to only fetch content when a user requests and respects Robots.txt blocking. (Perplexity)
• Google (Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews) respects Robots.txt block of their user agent “Google-Extended” to keep content from being used in model pre-training. (Google)
• Google does not respect a Robots.txt block on the Google-Extended user agent to keep content from being displayed in an AI Overview. (Joe Youngblood)
• It is plausible that Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Perplexity could use “search crawlers” or “browser fetchers” that ostensibly rank documents for an engine or display snippets to users to fetch all data and then rewrite that data into their own snippet, and then use that snippet they created for model pre-training all while claiming a site can opt-out of model pre-training with Robots.txt. (observation)
• LLM-AI / GenAI companies use more than one source to gather data for their model pre-training. It is known many use the Common Crawl data which respects Robots.txt blocking. However, they also use various companies such as Scale AI which do not list or declare a user-agent to block or discuss how they obtain content. (observation, GPT-3 dataset)
• Most LLM-AI / GenAI companies do not disclose or no longer disclose all sources of data used in model pre-training, meaning they could use a source that has access to your content bypassing your Robots.txt restriction easily (obervation)
• Some providers like SourceHut are blocking all cloud-based systems (Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, AWS, etc…). (The Register)
• When given the choice 80% of companies block LLM user-agents. (PPC Land)
• Some websites are seeing hundreds of thousands of visits from LLM scrapers masquerading as users per month (Hacker News)
• LLM Bot scraping almost cost one startup $7,000 due to an API fee (Metacast)
• LLM bot scraping cost an ecommerce company a $1,000 charge due to hosting overages (Joe Youngblood)

Editorial Note: The above are selected statistics about AI SEO, consumer behavior with AI platforms and systems, and Generative Engine Optimization. Our team provides these collections of statistics and maintains them updating the documents frequently. Please leave a comment below if there is a study missing or a segment of data we should include. If you find any inaccuracies you can contact us via our Contact page or notify us in the comments too and we’ll investigate and get those cleaned up. We keep statistic collection pages like this up to date with the latest research from various thought leaders and brands and our own internal research when published. Similar Content: Blogging Statistics and Facts