Google handled more searches than ever in early 2026, and 68.01% of US Google searches from January to April ended without a click. The numbers below cover where people search, how often they click, how pages rank, what changed with AI, and what the data says about local, technical, video and B2B SEO.
Every stat links to the study that produced it. Where studies disagree, both figures are listed. No forecasts and no unsourced roundup numbers. For AI search in depth, see AI SEO statistics; for cost and conversion comparisons, see SEO vs PPC statistics; for pipeline data, see B2B SEO statistics.
Search Engine Market Share in 2026
- 73.7% of US desktop searches across 41 large sites ran on Google in Q4 2025, while search engines as a group had about 80%, commerce sites about 10%, social networks about 5.5% and AI tools 3.2%. (SparkToro and Datos)
- 58.99% of web traffic worldwide came from mobile devices, against 39.26% from desktop and 1.76% from tablets. (StatCounter)
Is Search Still Growing?
- More than 5 trillion searches a year on Google, which works out to about 13.7 billion a day (our calculation). (Google)
- Record high for Google Search query volume, reached in the first quarter of 2026. (Google)
- 17% revenue growth in Google's Search and Other business in Q2 2026. (Alphabet)
- 26% more search use worldwide in 2025 when search engines and AI chat are counted together, and 16% more in the US. (Graphite)
- 2.5% fewer organic visits from Google to the 40,000 largest US sites, year over year. (Graphite)
- Google describes total organic click volume to websites as "relatively stable" year over year, without publishing the data. (Google)
- 45.7% of Google searches are branded once you weight by search volume, against 36.9% of unique queries. (Ahrefs)
Zero-Click Searches and Click-Through Rates
- 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click from January to April 2026, up from 60.45% in 2024. (SparkToro)
- About 45% of Google searches ended without a click ten years ago, measured on the older Jumpshot panel. (SparkToro)
- 22.6% CTR at position 1 on pages with no AI answer, against 3.6% when an AI answer shows and 7.1% blended. (First Page Sage)
- 58% lower CTR for the page ranked first when an AI Overview appears. (Ahrefs)
- 8% of visits with an AI summary led to a click on a regular result, against 15% of visits without one. (Pew Research Center)
- 2.4% organic CTR on queries with an AI Overview in February 2026, up from a low of 1.3% in December 2025, while queries without one rose from 2.8% to 3.8%. (Seer Interactive)
- 120% more clicks per impression for brands cited in an AI Overview than for brands left out, though still 38% fewer than with no AI Overview. (Seer Interactive)
- The zero-click rate moved from 33.75% to 31.53% on the same keywords after they started showing AI Overviews. (Semrush)
- 48% of tracked queries showed an AI Overview, up from roughly 30% a year earlier. (BrightEdge)
- 21.8% paid CTR on queries without an AI Overview in February 2026, down from 26% in January 2025, while paid CTR with an AI Overview rose from 14.6% to 16.2%. (Seer Interactive)
Where Website Traffic Comes From in 2026
- 3.0% a month was the average monthly drop in Google referrals, while ChatGPT referrals grew 5.5% a month. (Ahrefs)
- 42.4% of traffic came from organic search in Health Care, 39.6% in Communication Services and 33.8% in Industrials. (Conductor)
Ranking Statistics
- 1.74% of new pages reached Google's top 10 within a year, or 6.11% of English pages with content. (Ahrefs)
- 40.82% in the first month is how many of the pages that reached the top 10 got there. (Ahrefs)
- 72.9% of top 10 pages are more than three years old, and the average #1 page is five years old. (Ahrefs)
- 96.55% of pages get no traffic from Google, from a study of about 14 billion pages. (Ahrefs)
- Almost 93% of US keywords get fewer than 10 searches a month. (Ahrefs)
- 45% less low quality, unoriginal content in search results after Google's March 2024 core update, by Google's own count. (Google)
- 10 confirmed updates from January 2025 to October 2026: five core updates and five spam updates. (Google)
Content and AI Writing
- 81.9% of top 20 pages mix AI and human writing (4.6% are pure AI and 13.5% pure human), and AI share correlates with rank at just 0.011. (Ahrefs)
- 13.9% of bloggers say their blog delivers strong results, a record low, while 92.4% now use AI for blogging. (Orbit Media)
- 18% of bloggers say they don't know if their blog delivers results, a big jump from the year before. (Orbit Media)
- 50% better odds of strong results for bloggers who publish original research, and 2.6x the benchmark for those who work with influencers. (Orbit Media)
- 95% of B2B marketers say their organization uses applications powered by AI. (CMI and MarketingProfs)
Backlink Statistics
- 0.255 correlation between referring domains and Google rankings, ahead of total backlinks (0.248) and keywords in the URL (0.034). (Ahrefs)
- 0.33 on local queries is the correlation between links or referring domains and rankings. (Ahrefs)
- 66.5% of links pointing to 2,062,173 sampled sites since January 2013 have disappeared. (Ahrefs)
Technical SEO Statistics
- 55.9% of websites had good Core Web Vitals in September 2026, up from 53.7% a year earlier. (Chrome UX Report)
- 68.3% with good LCP against 81.7% of sites with good CLS and 85.4% with good INP. (Chrome UX Report)
- 48% of mobile sites passed Core Web Vitals in 2025, up from 36% in 2023, against 56% on desktop. (HTTP Archive)
- 51% of the top 1,000 sites pass Core Web Vitals on mobile. (HTTP Archive)
- 62% with good LCP on mobile against 74% of desktop pages. (HTTP Archive)
- 45% of mobile home pages pass Core Web Vitals, against 56% of mobile inner pages. (HTTP Archive)
- 91.7% of desktop pages use HTTPS, as do 91.5% of mobile pages. (HTTP Archive)
- 67.7% of desktop pages have a meta description, while 98.6% have a title tag. (HTTP Archive)
- 43% of home pages use JSON-LD structured data, on desktop and mobile alike. (HTTP Archive)
- 68% of desktop pages use a canonical tag (67% on mobile), up from 65% the year before. (HTTP Archive)
Local SEO Statistics
- 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, and 41% always do, up from 29% a year earlier. (BrightLocal)
- 47% of consumers won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 31% will only use one rated 4.5 stars or more, up from 17%. (BrightLocal)
- 74% of consumers only care about reviews written in the last three months, and 54% check the business's website after reading positive reviews. (BrightLocal)
- 45% of consumers use ChatGPT or other AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. (BrightLocal)
- Proximity ranks first among local pack factors, ahead of keywords in the Business Profile title, an address in the searched city and opening hours. (Whitespark)
- 7.9% of local searches trigger an AI Overview. (Ahrefs)
Video SEO Statistics
- 22.9% of citations among the 50 domains most cited in Google AI Overviews go to YouTube, the top site. (Ahrefs)
- 0.737 correlation between YouTube mentions and brand visibility in AI answers, the strongest of any factor Ahrefs tested. (Ahrefs)
- 76% of companies make at least one video a month, and vertical video uploads rose 24% in a year. (Wistia)
- 48% of companies plan to raise video promotion budgets this year, while 40% expect to spend more on production. (Wistia)
AI search and AI answers
- 2.5 billion monthly users for AI Overviews, while AI Mode passed 1 billion within a year of launch. (Google)
- AI Mode queries more than doubled every quarter since launch, and Google Search queries reached an all-time high last quarter. (Google)
- 44% of US adults have used ChatGPT, up from 34% a year earlier, and about a quarter have used Gemini. (Pew Research Center)
- 42% of US adults use chatbots to search for information. (Pew Research Center)
- 6 in 10 US adults read the AI summaries at the top of search results, while 3 in 10 don't. (Pew Research Center)
- 15.69% of keywords showed an AI Overview in November 2025, after rising from 6.49% in January to nearly 25% in July. (Semrush)
- 25.11% of Google searches showed an AI Overview across 21.9 million unique US searches from September 15 to October 12, 2025. (Conductor)
- 21% of all keywords show an AI Overview, rising to 57.9% of question queries and 46% of queries with 7+ words, but only 7.9% of local searches. (Ahrefs)
- Position 1 CTR fell from 7.3% to 1.6% between December 2023 and December 2025 on keywords that show AI Overviews, compared with 7.6% to 3.9% on informational keywords without them. (Ahrefs)
- 92% to 94% of AI Mode searches ended without a click to another site, and AI Mode queries averaged 7.22 words compared with 4.0 in regular search. (Semrush)
- 0.43% of visits came from AI assistants across 115,254 sites in September 2026 (ChatGPT 0.34%), compared with 26.82% from search. (Ahrefs)
- 37.9% of AI Overview citations rank in Google's top 10, down from about 76% in July 2025, and 31.0% rank outside the top 100. (Ahrefs)
- 43.2% of #1 Google pages get cited by ChatGPT, 3.5x the rate for pages beyond Google's top 20. (AirOps)
- Brands are 6.5x more likely to surface through third-party content than through their own site on commercial discovery queries. (AirOps)
- 75% of pages cited by AI were updated in the last year (88% in the last two years), and over a quarter of these fresh pages first went live more than two years ago. (Seer Interactive)
B2B SEO and pipeline
- 748% average ROI from B2B SEO, the highest of any channel tracked. PPC returns 36%. (First Page Sage)
- 51% of SEO MQLs become SQLs in B2B SaaS, compared with 26% of PPC MQLs. (First Page Sage)
- 7.9% average conversion rate from organic search on software sites, almost level with 8.2% from paid search and far above 1.7% from paid social. (Ruler Analytics)
- 67% of B2B buyers would rather buy without talking to a sales rep. (Gartner)
- 61% of the journey is done before buyers first contact a seller. (6sense)
- 95% of deals go to a vendor that was on the buyer's day-one shortlist. (6sense)
- 94% of buying groups rank their shortlist before talking to any seller. (6sense)
- 79% of first contacts are started by the buyer. (6sense)
- 57% of B2B decision-makers use search engines in early research, more than any other channel. (SurveyMonkey)
- 83% of B2B decision-makers finish their research in peer communities and self-directed search before they engage a sales team. (SurveyMonkey)
- 83% of software buyers change their first vendor list after research. (Gartner)
- 2.5 vendors is how many vendors the average software buyer actively engages with. (Gartner)
- 94% of business buyers use AI during their buying process, up from 89% a year earlier. (Forrester)
- 51% of software buyers start research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google, up from 29%. (G2)
SEO ROI and SEO vs PPC
- $66.69 average cost per lead from Google and Microsoft search ads in 2026, with a $5.42 average CPC, a 6.64% CTR and an 8.18% click to lead rate. (WordStream by LocaliQ)
- 66.61% of Google clicks go to organic results, 6.01% to paid ads and 27.38% to Google's own properties, while 68% of US searches end without a click. (SparkToro)
- Half of Americans trust organic search results the most, compared with 5% who trust paid results more, and 46% trust both equally. (Page One Power)
- 89% of ad clicks are not replaced by organic clicks when search ads are paused, on average across 400+ Google pause studies. (Google)
- No measurable short-term benefit from brand keyword ads in eBay's large field experiments. (NBER)
Estimate Your Organic Clicks in 2026
Enter a few keywords with their monthly search volume and your current position. The estimator applies the 2026 click-through rate curves and shows how many clicks AI answers may cost you and how many citations could win back.
Pick a study, or drag the slider to the share you see in your own rank tracker.
Sources: CTR by position from First Page Sage (Sept 2026, client data) or Ahrefs (Feb 2026), citation lift from Seer Interactive (Apr 2026, client data), AI answer shares from Semrush (Nov 2025), Ahrefs (Sept 2025), Conductor (Sept to Oct 2025) and BrightEdge (Feb 2026). CTR curves are averages, so check them against your own Search Console data.
With the default inputs, three keywords at positions 1, 3 and 5 would earn about 640 clicks a month if no AI answers appeared. At BrightEdge's 48% AI Overview rate, with a quarter of those answers citing you, the estimate falls to about 395 clicks, and citations win back about 14 of them (our calculation).
Swap in your own keywords and the AI answer share from your rank tracker before you plan around the result. If the gap looks large, our B2B SEO agency team can help you plan for it.
FAQ
What percentage of Google searches end without a click in 2026?
SparkToro measured 68.01% of US Google searches ending without a click from January to April 2026, up from 60.45% in 2024 and about 45% ten years ago. AI Mode goes further, with 92% to 94% of its searches ending without a visit to another site (Semrush).
What is the click-through rate for the #1 result on Google?
First Page Sage's September 2026 tables put position 1 at 22.6% on pages with no AI answer, 3.6% when an AI answer shows and 7.1% blended. Ahrefs found that an AI Overview cuts the top result's click-through rate by 58%.
How much of the search market does Google have?
Google held 89.94% of worldwide search engine market share in September 2026 and 85.19% in the US, according to StatCounter. When SparkToro and Datos counted searches across 41 large US sites, including commerce and social sites, Google ran 73.7% of desktop searches.
Is SEO dead because of AI?
No. Google says query volume reached a record high in early 2026, and its Search revenue grew 17% in Q2 2026. Graphite found that total search use, counting AI chat, grew 26% worldwide in 2025, while organic visits to the 40,000 largest US sites fell only 2.5%. Each search sends fewer clicks, so SEO now includes earning citations in AI answers as well as rankings.
How much website traffic comes from organic search?
Across 115,254 websites tracked by Ahrefs, search sent 26.82% of visits in September 2026, and Google alone sent 23.96%. Conductor found higher organic shares in some industries, such as 42.4% in Health Care and 33.8% in Industrials.
How long does it take to rank on Google?
Ahrefs found that only 1.74% of new pages reach the top 10 within a year. Of the pages that do, 40.82% get there in their first month. The average #1 page is five years old, so refreshing pages that already rank is often faster than starting new ones.
Does content written by AI hurt rankings?
Ahrefs found almost no link between the share of AI text on a page and its ranking, with a correlation of 0.011. Most top 20 pages (81.9%) mix AI and human writing, and 74.2% of new pages include some AI text. Expert input and careful editing are still worth the time.
Do backlinks still matter in 2026?
Yes. Ahrefs found that referring domains correlate 0.255 with Google rankings, the strongest of the link metrics it measured, and links correlate 0.33 with rankings on local queries. Links from many different sites count slightly more than the raw number of backlinks, which correlates at 0.248.
Want to keep learning? Read our guides on B2B keyword research, increasing traffic to a B2B website and SEO best practices.
