15 AI Search Stats Every Marketers Need to Know Going Into 2026

TL;DR: AI adoption is accelerating fast. 75% of consumers say they’re using AI search tools more today than a year ago. Here’s what you need to know to optimize brand visibility for 2026 and beyond.

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Keeping up with AI search trends is like trying to hit a moving target… while the target is on a Roomba… and someone keeps rearranging the furniture.

Don’t worry! We’ve got data to help you steady the target and tighten your strategy. Let’s dig in.

AI search is increasingly becoming the default

AI tools aren’t a side quest anymore — they’re becoming a primary tool people use to find brands and make decisions. These stats show how quickly behavior (and trust) is shifting.

1) Traditional search engine volume is projected to drop 25% by 2026 due to AI chatbots and virtual agents.

Source: Gartner

These aren’t fringe users tinkering with ChatGPT — this is customers integrating AI into everyday decision-making.

2) 62% of global consumers trust AI tools to guide their brand decisions.

Source: Yext Search Archetypes Survey 2025

AI has crossed the credibility threshold. People aren’t just experimenting — they’re letting AI influence what they buy, where they go, and who they choose.

3) 43% of consumers use AI search tools daily or more.

Source: Yext Search Archetypes Survey 2025

Daily behavior turns a tool into a habit — and habits become default decision paths. If customers are asking AI every day, your brand had better be showing up in AI answers.

4) ChatGPT alone has nearly 800 million weekly active users.

Source: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

…And that’s one model of many. This isn’t an edge case; it’s mainstream behavior. Which means, your brand is being evaluated in AI answers, ready or not.

5) 68% of consumers have used ChatGPT to research local products or services.

Source: Yext Search Archetypes Survey 2025

AI search is influencing “near me” decisions — restaurant choices, clinic appointments, local banking. For multi-location brands, that means managing local listings and using structured data are more critical than ever.

6) Only 19% of consumers trust AI tools for local search (vs. 45% trusting traditional search engines).

Source: Yext Search Archetypes Survey 2025

Translation: People use AI for local research, but many still verify elsewhere. That trust gap is an opportunity: brands with clean, consistent listings give AI fewer reasons to make mistakes, and customers fewer reasons to bounce.

Key takeaway: Assume AI is already part of your funnel. If your brand isn’t showing up where AI engines finds answers, you’re invisible in critical customer decision-making moments.

Your brand data is feeding AI

AI answers don’t materialize out of thin air. Models build responses from sources they can verify, and they tend to cite what’s consistent, structured, and widely corroborated. This is where brand visibility stops being a content problem and becomes a data problem.

Here’s what our AI citations research found:

7) 86% of sources in AI-generated answers are from brand-managed properties.

Source: Yext Research | Citations

The overwhelming majority of citations come from places you own or have significant influence over. That’s a rare advantage for marketers: unlike social algorithms or paid search, AI visibility is built on data you can directly shape.

8) Citations breakdown (where AI finds answers):

• 44% link to websites (e.g. your corporate site and local pages)

• 42% of citations link to listings (e.g., Google Business Profile, YP.com listing)

• 8% link to reviews and social pages (e.g., Yelp, Facebook)

• ~6% link to forums, news, government, and ‘other’ sites (e.g., Quora, .gov sites).

Source: Yext Research | Citations

Metrics shift slightly by model, by industry, and based on the type of question asked (branded vs. unbranded, subjective vs. objective), but these numbers offer great generalized insight into the hierarchy of what sources AI cites most frequently. Owned facts (site + listings) outweigh social chatter and media mentions combined, meaning if your listings are a mess, your visibility will take a hit.

9) Averaging across AI models, financial services brands receive 48% of citations from their first-party website; healthcare brands get 53% from listings.

Sources: Yext Research | Citations

Authority is industry-specific. Finance wins with clear, trustworthy site content. Healthcare wins with verified directory accuracy and location truth. One “AI checklist” won’t fit every vertical.

10) Only ~5% of AI citations overlap across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Source: Yext Research | Building a Monthly Digital Brand Visibility Observatory

Different models trust different sources, so there’s really no single universal leaderboard. Winning in one model doesn’t automatically win you the others. The upside is big: tons of competitive white space. The strategy is also simple: make your facts clean and consistent enough to be trusted anywhere.

11) The top ten third-party directories drive 52% of all directory citations for retail queries.

Source: Yext Research | The Retail Battle for Citations

Our data shows the top ten third-party directories drive 52% of all directory citations — a mix of obvious names (Google, BBB, MapQuest) and smaller directories most brands ignore. That directly contradicts the idea that you can just show up on a few major sites and call it done. If you’re only covering the big three, you’re missing a big slice of where AI is actually pulling its facts.

Key takeaway: Treat your website and listings like a single source of truth. AI already does.

Publishing structured, consistent brand data everywhere customers search determines whether AI surfaces you or a competitor – and whether customers trust what they see when you show up.

Customer discovery is still fragmented, just not the way it used to be

Customers increasingly trust AI for search, but it’s important to understand that they aren’t making purchasing decisions in a vacuum just ye. Let’s look at the reality of the decision-making process.

12) Only 11% of U.S. consumers trust the first tool they use when searching online.

Source: Yext Search Archetypes Survey 2025

People bounce. They compare. They double-check. That’s a gift: every surface you control becomes another chance to win trust and conversion.

13) 45% of U.S. consumers start product research via search engines, 15% via AI tools, and 14% via review sites.

Source: Yext Search Archetypes Survey 2025

The customer journey isn’t linear; it’s a game of pinball. Customers bounce between search, AI, reviews, brand site, and back to AI. Traditional search engines like Google? Still very much a part of the equation. Your job is to show up consistently across the verification loop.

14) Customers are still grappling with specific AI trust issues:

• 40% said AI struggles with nuanced queries
• 37% were concerned with a lack of trustworthy sources
• 31% said it had difficulty comparing local options

Source: Yext Search Archetypes Survey 2025

Brands that nail accuracy and coverage win

When AI is deciding what to cite, it rewards what’s clear and confirmable — the boring stuff that’s painfully easy to neglect. Coverage, completeness, and structured facts are what make your brand easy to trust at scale.

15) Businesses syncing more than 75% of listings see a 186% increase in Google website clicks.

Source: Yext | Benefits of having a diverse publisher network

Coverage isn’t “hygiene.” It’s performance. When your location data is accurate and distributed widely, customers find you faster — and click more.

Key takeaway: Data quality is performance marketing now. Better coverage and consistency doesn’t just reduce risk — it directly increases visibility and clicks.

16) Bonus stat (for getting out of emergency Reddit strategy meetings): Forums like Reddit only account for ~2% of AI citations.

Source: Yext Research | Citations

… Permission to pump the brakes on developing a marketing strategy to optimize forum presence granted.

AI’s impact on the next era of marketing

AI search isn’t a disruption — it’s a redistribution of authority. Every chatbot, answer engine, and AI agent is deciding whose facts to believe, and those decisions are shaped by the data brands provide.

Here’s the shift:

• What used to be SEO is now data management. Rankings are being replaced by references. What matters isn’t where you appear on a page — it’s whether you’re credible enough to be included at all. AI systems reward structured information they can verify (schema, consistent facts, clean entity signals). The next great marketing moat is operationalized data management.

• Owned content is overtaking earned media in AI visibility signals. When citations come largely from brand-managed sources, marketers have more control than they’ve had in years — if they invest in clean, structured information.

• AI visibility rewards truth. Consistency and verifiability across listings, schema, and reputation signals tells AI you’re reliable. Reliability earns citations. Citations earn clicks. Accuracy amplifies presence.

Visibility today isn’t about who shouts the loudest (or even who has the biggest budget) — it’s about which brands teach AI what’s true first.

Eager to learn more? Yext’s new podcast, The Visibility Brief, delivers executive perspectives and real-world insights on how to lead, adapt, and grow in a world where AI agents decide which brands surface, and which disappear.

Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: [Apple] [Spotify] [YouTube]