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Research

State of AI Search 2026.

Our annual field report on how AI has rewritten buyer behavior - with data from 10,000 businesses, 12,000 prompts, and 6 major AI models.

What you get

What you get

Buyer behavior

How consumers and B2B buyers use AI at every stage of the decision journey.

Citation dynamics

How each model picks sources, and what wins the top-3 named-business slot.

Global coverage

Findings across 180+ cities and 30+ countries. Local patterns diverge sharply.

Business impact

Revenue, conversion, and referral data from businesses tracked over 12 months.

By the numbers

58%
of consumers consult AI before purchase
11.4%
conversion rate from ChatGPT referrals
94%
of businesses are invisible to AI models
72%
trust AI recommendations more than ads
1–3
businesses named per AI answer (avg)
77%
AI-assisted purchases within seconds

Six findings that changed our playbook

The click-through collapse

AI Overviews and answer engines are almost entirely zero-click. When AI cites a business by name, the buyer's next action is calling or booking - not clicking through.

Citation concentration

Across every industry we measured, the top 3 cited businesses capture 78–91% of AI mentions. Being ranked 4th in AI is roughly equivalent to being on page 5 of Google.

Model-specific playbooks are permanent

The gap between ChatGPT's citation profile and Perplexity's is widening, not narrowing. One-size-fits-all strategies underperform model-specific tuning by 3–5x.

Freshness wins Perplexity

Perplexity's citation half-life is under 90 days. Static, evergreen content underperforms unless it's actively republished, reviewed, or referenced by fresh sources.

Local queries are 4x zero-click

Local 'near me' AI answers are almost never clicked. The AI names the business, the buyer calls. GEO wins the entire local funnel.

Reviews still matter - differently

AI models synthesize review sentiment across platforms, not just Google. Reddit, YouTube, and specialty publishers now carry as much weight as Google reviews for many categories.

Where do you sit in the data?

Run a free AI visibility audit and see your position across every major model.

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