Retrieval Layer Intelligence Report
AI Search Market Share and Referral Traffic Report
Which AI assistants people use, how much traffic they send to websites, and what’s changing. We pull the numbers together each quarter, label where each one comes from, and say plainly where the data runs out.
- Updated October 2026
- Next update January 2027
- Quarterly
ChatGPT56.4%
Gemini25.0%
Claude9.6%
Perplexity0.9%
Copilot1.5%
DeepSeek3.4%
Grok2.3%
Source: Similarweb, global, all devices. Measured. The full tables are under The data.
What this means for your business
- 1B+
- Monthly users of the Gemini app (Google, August 2026)
- 0.3% to 1%
- Share of website traffic sent by AI assistants (SE Ranking, Conductor)
- +60%
- Better conversion from AI visitors in US retail in July 2026, up from +42% in March (Adobe)
- 30M+
- Paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats (Microsoft, July 2026)
People ask AI assistants before they visit a website.
Google says the Gemini app has more than a billion monthly users and AI Mode in Search has more than a billion. OpenAI says ChatGPT has 1.2 billion weekly users. All three figures come from the companies themselves.
Very little of that shows up in analytics as “AI”.
In two large samples from 2025 and early 2026, AI assistants sent between 0.3% and 1% of website traffic. Clicks from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted as ordinary Google search. Many phone apps drop the information that says where a visitor came from, and Grok sends almost none.
The visits that do come through behave differently by industry.
In US retail, people arriving from AI assistants converted about 60% better than other visitors in July 2026. In travel they still converted worse (Adobe).
Which assistant matters depends on your buyer.
ChatGPT sends about four out of five AI referral clicks. On US phones, Meta AI, Gemini and Claude each hold 14% to 18% of daily users behind ChatGPT. At work, Microsoft 365 Copilot went from 15 million paid seats in January 2026 to more than 30 million in July.
Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Visa and Mastercard all run systems that let AI agents shop for someone.
None of them has published how many purchases those agents complete.
Where the visits go, and where they come from
Share of visits to the AI assistants' own websites on the left; share of the clicks they send to other websites on the right. Both measured, from different samples.
- ChatGPT56.4%
- Gemini25.0%
- Claude9.6%
- Perplexity0.9%
- Copilot1.5%
- DeepSeek3.4%
- Grok2.3%
- ChatGPT80.5%
- Gemini10.9%
- Claude1.0%
- Perplexity5.9%
- Copilot1.8%
- DeepSeekNot measured
- GrokNot measured
ChatGPT’s share bottomed at 52.7% in May 2026 and has risen every month since.
Gemini peaked at 27.8% in May and has held between 25% and 26.6% since. Claude went from 2.3% in October 2025 to 9.6% in September 2026. (Similarweb, September 2026 and August 2026 posts.)
Monthly visits, August 2026 (Similarweb): ChatGPT 5.64 billion, Gemini 2.62 billion, Claude 950 million, Perplexity 95 million.
Visit counts for Grok, DeepSeek, Copilot and Meta AI are behind Similarweb’s paywall.
Bounce rate, September 2026 (Similarweb): ChatGPT 24.9%, Gemini 27.3%, Claude 28.0%, Grok 31.6%, Perplexity 33.3%, DeepSeek 38.8%, Copilot 42.8%, Meta AI 44.6%.
This measures people leaving the AI assistant’s own website after one page.
Notes: Similarweb’s figures are panel estimates of website visits.
They don’t include app use. Similarweb added a second Copilot domain in April 2026, so Copilot’s numbers before and after aren’t comparable.
StatCounter counts visits across more than a million websites.
SE Ranking studied about 101,000 sites using Google Analytics. Both read where a visitor came from, so anything that hides that is missing: Grok sends almost none, Meta AI isn’t tracked, many phone apps drop it, and Google’s AI features are counted as Google search.
How much traffic is that?
AI assistants sent 0.32% of all website traffic in early 2026 across SE Ranking’s sample, up from 0.24% in 2025. Conductor’s sample of 1,215 large enterprise sites put it near 1% in 2025. The share depends heavily on the industry and the sample.
What those visitors do.
In US retail, visitors from AI assistants converted about 60% better and spent 53% more per visit than other visitors in July 2026 (Adobe Digital Insights). In travel, AI visitors still converted 1% worse in July 2026, down from 28% in May, and they stayed longer.
Reading versus sending.
AI platforms read far more pages than they send visitors back. Across every site on Cloudflare’s network combined, Cloudflare counted about 549 page fetches for each visit Anthropic sent in September 2026, 341 for OpenAI and 2,373 for Perplexity, against under 5 for Google. Cloudflare says these numbers may run too high, by an amount it can’t pin down, because clicks from apps like Claude’s don’t say where they came from.
AI assistant web traffic share
Share of visits to AI assistant websites, global, all devices (Similarweb, measured):
| Assistant | September 2026 | October 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 56.4% | 71.8% |
| Gemini | 25.0% | 13.6% |
| Claude | 9.6% | 2.3% |
| DeepSeek | 3.4% | 4.1% |
| Grok | 2.3% | 2.8% |
| Copilot | 1.5% | 2.0% |
| Perplexity | 0.9% | 2.5% |
- ChatGPT
- September 2026
- 56.4%
- October 2025
- 71.8%
- Gemini
- September 2026
- 25.0%
- October 2025
- 13.6%
- Claude
- September 2026
- 9.6%
- October 2025
- 2.3%
- DeepSeek
- September 2026
- 3.4%
- October 2025
- 4.1%
- Grok
- September 2026
- 2.3%
- October 2025
- 2.8%
- Copilot
- September 2026
- 1.5%
- October 2025
- 2.0%
- Perplexity
- September 2026
- 0.9%
- October 2025
- 2.5%
AI referral traffic to websites
Share of visits to other websites that arrive from each AI assistant (measured):
| Assistant | StatCounter, Sep 2026 | StatCounter, Apr 2026 | SE Ranking, Jan to Apr 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 80.5% | 76.9% | 74.8% |
| Gemini | 10.9% | 9.0% | 11.6% |
| Perplexity | 5.9% | 7.7% | 7.2% |
| Copilot | 1.8% | 3.8% | 3.5% |
| Claude | 1.0% | 2.7% | 2.6% |
- ChatGPT
- StatCounter, Sep 2026
- 80.5%
- StatCounter, Apr 2026
- 76.9%
- SE Ranking, Jan to Apr 2026
- 74.8%
- Gemini
- StatCounter, Sep 2026
- 10.9%
- StatCounter, Apr 2026
- 9.0%
- SE Ranking, Jan to Apr 2026
- 11.6%
- Perplexity
- StatCounter, Sep 2026
- 5.9%
- StatCounter, Apr 2026
- 7.7%
- SE Ranking, Jan to Apr 2026
- 7.2%
- Copilot
- StatCounter, Sep 2026
- 1.8%
- StatCounter, Apr 2026
- 3.8%
- SE Ranking, Jan to Apr 2026
- 3.5%
- Claude
- StatCounter, Sep 2026
- 1.0%
- StatCounter, Apr 2026
- 2.7%
- SE Ranking, Jan to Apr 2026
- 2.6%
Which assistants your buyers use
17.7%
Meta AI's share of US mobile daily users, August 2026 (Apptopia)
People on their phones.
ChatGPT is the most used AI app in the US. Behind it, Meta AI held 17.7% of daily users in August 2026, Gemini 17.2% and Claude 14.4% (Apptopia, US mobile, measured). 86% of US chatbot app users stick to one app (Apptopia, Q2 2026).
30M
Paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats, July 2026 (Microsoft)
People at work.
Microsoft 365 Copilot passed 30 million paid seats in July 2026 (Microsoft, company-reported). Among US businesses on Ramp, 43.8% paid Anthropic and 40.6% paid OpenAI (Ramp AI Index, September 2026, measured).
56.4%
ChatGPT's share of AI assistant web traffic, September 2026 (Similarweb)
People researching on the web.
ChatGPT had 56.4% of AI assistant web traffic in September 2026, Gemini 25.0% and Claude 9.6% (Similarweb, global, measured).
1B+
AI Mode monthly users, July 2026 (Google, company-reported)
People searching on Google.
Google says AI Mode has more than a billion monthly users. Their clicks land in your analytics as Google search, so they rarely look like AI traffic.
What you can check in your own analytics
- 1
Google Analytics 4
Since May 2026, GA4 has an AI Assistant channel for visits from assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot and Grok. Check referrals for perplexity.ai and claude.ai too. ChatGPT tags its links with utm_source=chatgpt.com.
- 2
Bing Webmaster Tools
The free AI Performance report shows how often Copilot and Bing's AI answers cited your pages and a sample of the searches behind those citations.
- 3
Google Search Console
Search Console has a generative AI report showing impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says that as of August 31, 2026, it had reached every site worldwide, though a site with too few AI impressions won't see one. It shows impressions, not the searches behind them.
- 4
Server logs
Look for ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and Perplexity-User. Those fetches happen when someone asks an AI assistant a question and it reads your page to answer.
- 5
Your customers
Ask how they found you. A customer who asked ChatGPT about you won’t appear in any of the reports above.
How much each of these can prove is laid out on our measurement page.
Do AI visitors convert better?
Each study below measured something different, on a different sample, against a different channel. They're listed with what each one compared and when it was published.
AI visitor conversion studies
What each study measured, on what sample, against which channel:
| Study | Sample | Compared with | What it found | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opollo | 312 IT and technology service firms | Google organic | AI visitors converted at 14.2%, against 2.8% | February 22, 2026 |
| Broworks, a Webflow agency | Its own site | No comparison channel | AI brought 10% of organic traffic 90 days after AEO work, and 27% of that traffic became sales-qualified leads | August 9, 2025 |
| Ahrefs | Its own site | Organic search | AI visitors were 0.5% of visitors and 12.1% of signups, about 23 times the rate | June 16, 2025 |
| Semrush | An estimate across 500+ marketing and SEO topics; method not published | Organic search | 4.4 times the organic rate | June 9, 2025 |
| Amsive | 54 sites, six months of GA4 data | Organic search | 4.87% against 4.60%, a gap that wasn't statistically significant | September 3, 2025 |
| The SEO Works | 95 sites, 63 in the conversion comparison, September 2025 to August 2026 | Organic search, paid search and direct | 7.18% against 6.08% for organic (1.18 times); 0.67 times paid search; 2.48 times direct; 0.62 times organic on B2B product sites | 2026 |
| Adobe Analytics | Over one trillion visits to US retail sites; retail only | Non-AI traffic, such as paid search and email | AI visitors converted 42% better in March 2026 and 60% better in July 2026, after converting 38% worse in March 2025 | April 16 and August 19, 2026 |
| Marie Haynes | 100 sites, 12 months of GA4 data, 55 tracking conversions | Google organic | ChatGPT visitors converted at 13.8%, against 3.02%; Google organic drove 96.5% of conversions across the channels analyzed; all LLM sessions were 0.73% of Google organic sessions | October 21, 2026 |
Opollo
- Sample
- 312 IT and technology service firms
- Compared with
- Google organic
- What it found
- AI visitors converted at 14.2%, against 2.8%
- Published
- February 22, 2026
Broworks, a Webflow agency
- Sample
- Its own site
- Compared with
- No comparison channel
- What it found
- AI brought 10% of organic traffic 90 days after AEO work, and 27% of that traffic became sales-qualified leads
- Published
- August 9, 2025
Ahrefs
- Sample
- Its own site
- Compared with
- Organic search
- What it found
- AI visitors were 0.5% of visitors and 12.1% of signups, about 23 times the rate
- Published
- June 16, 2025
Semrush
- Sample
- An estimate across 500+ marketing and SEO topics; method not published
- Compared with
- Organic search
- What it found
- 4.4 times the organic rate
- Published
- June 9, 2025
Amsive
- Sample
- 54 sites, six months of GA4 data
- Compared with
- Organic search
- What it found
- 4.87% against 4.60%, a gap that wasn't statistically significant
- Published
- September 3, 2025
The SEO Works
- Sample
- 95 sites, 63 in the conversion comparison, September 2025 to August 2026
- Compared with
- Organic search, paid search and direct
- What it found
- 7.18% against 6.08% for organic (1.18 times); 0.67 times paid search; 2.48 times direct; 0.62 times organic on B2B product sites
- Published
- 2026
Adobe Analytics
- Sample
- Over one trillion visits to US retail sites; retail only
- Compared with
- Non-AI traffic, such as paid search and email
- What it found
- AI visitors converted 42% better in March 2026 and 60% better in July 2026, after converting 38% worse in March 2025
- Published
- April 16 and August 19, 2026
Marie Haynes
- Sample
- 100 sites, 12 months of GA4 data, 55 tracking conversions
- Compared with
- Google organic
- What it found
- ChatGPT visitors converted at 13.8%, against 3.02%; Google organic drove 96.5% of conversions across the channels analyzed; all LLM sessions were 0.73% of Google organic sessions
- Published
- October 21, 2026
Usage across web, mobile and desktop
The same assistant can look very different depending on what's measured.
- 38.7%
- ChatGPT's share of US mobile daily users, March 2026 (Apptopia)
- 46.4%
- ChatGPT's share of global app and web audience, May 2026 (Sensor Tower)
- 52.7%
- ChatGPT's share of global web visits, May 2026 (Similarweb)
Measured a few months apart, ChatGPT’s share was 38.7% of US mobile daily users (Apptopia, March 2026), 46.4% of global app and web audience (Sensor Tower, May 2026) and 52.7% of global web visits (Similarweb, May 2026). Each source counts something different: phones in one country, apps and web worldwide, or websites only.
Mobile (Apptopia, US, measured).
In August 2026 ChatGPT led, followed by Meta AI at 17.7%, Gemini at 17.2% and Claude at 14.4% of daily users. Consumer Copilot’s US mobile daily users fell 84% between March and July. Chatbot downloads dipped globally in July for the first time year over year.
Web (Similarweb, global, measured).
See the share table above.
Desktop.
We didn’t find a reliable public measure of desktop app use for ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini. Comscore publishes desktop figures but doesn’t say whether native apps are included, and its releases conflict.
What the platforms say about themselves (company-reported):
- Google Gemini app
More than 1 billion monthly users
August 2026
Google AI ModeMore than 1 billion monthly users
July 2026
- OpenAI
1.2 billion weekly ChatGPT users
September 2026
- Microsoft 365 Copilot
More than 30 million paid seats
July 2026
Meta AIDaily users up 60% since its rebuild. No monthly count published.
July 2026
- Anthropic, Perplexity
No current user counts published
Not published
Source: each company's own announcements. Company-reported.
Each company defines its count differently, and none is independently checked.
How many AI models businesses and people use
81%
of 100 CIOs use three or more model families (a16z, early 2026)
Businesses.
81% of 100 CIOs at Forbes Global 2000 companies said they use three or more model families in testing or production (a16z survey, early 2026). Among US businesses on Ramp, 43.8% paid Anthropic and 40.6% paid OpenAI (Ramp AI Index, September 2026). Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Researcher has GPT draft and Claude review in the same task (Microsoft, March 2026).
86%
of US chatbot app users use a single app (Apptopia, Q2 2026)
People.
86% of US chatbot app users use a single app (Apptopia, Q2 2026). About 20% of weekly ChatGPT web users also used Gemini that week (a16z, March 2026).
AI agents on the web
Agents are AI tools that visit pages, click and fill in forms for someone.
They show up in website server logs and network data. The chatbot traffic figures above don’t include them.
- 15x
- Growth in AI fetches answering live questions during 2025 (Cloudflare)
- 4.2%
- Share of HTML requests from AI bots other than Google's, 2025 (Cloudflare)
- 2.4%
- Agent activity reaching checkout or payment pages, May 2026 (HUMAN)
- Fetches by AI assistants answering someone’s live question grew more than 15 times during 2025 (Cloudflare Radar, measured).
- AI bots other than Google’s made up 4.2% of HTML requests on Cloudflare’s network in 2025 (Cloudflare).
- Of the agent traffic HUMAN saw in May 2026, Perplexity’s Comet browser made up 47%, OpenAI’s Atlas 20% and Anthropic’s Claude for Chrome 19%. About 2.4% of agent activity reached checkout or payment pages (HUMAN, its own customer network).
- No one has published how many purchases AI agents complete.
Agentic commerce: where things stand
- Google Universal Commerce Protocol
Open standard. Checkout inside AI Mode and Gemini for eligible US retailers through Google Pay. The retailer stays the merchant of record, and shoppers can move their cart to the retailer's site.
Launched Jan 2026, updated May 2026
- OpenAI shopping in ChatGPT
Instant Checkout launched in September 2025. In March 2026 OpenAI pulled back and refocused ChatGPT shopping on product discovery, with merchants using their own checkout.
Mar 2026
- Microsoft Copilot Checkout
Live in the US with PayPal, Shopify, Stripe and Etsy. The retailer stays the merchant of record.
Jan 2026
- Perplexity
Instant Buy with PayPal for US users.
Nov 2025
AmazonAlexa for Shopping, with Buy for Me purchasing from other retailers' sites.
May 2026
Visa Intelligent Commerce
In pilot with select partners.
Apr 2026
Mastercard Agent Pay
Live in the US, with pilots elsewhere.
Jan 2026
Source: each company's own announcements. Company-reported.
None of these has published transaction volumes. Some have published what product data they use. OpenAI names structured product data, availability, price and quality, and Perplexity names merchant product specs. Google’s Merchant Center help lists product attributes it says can help shoppers find products in AI Mode.
How this report is made
Hayden Bond of Plate Lunch Collective puts this report together each quarter. We don’t take affiliate fees or sponsorship from any platform or data provider. The numbers come from Similarweb, StatCounter, SE Ranking, Conductor, Adobe Digital Insights, Apptopia, Sensor Tower, the Ramp AI Index, Cloudflare Radar, HUMAN and the platforms’ own announcements. Each figure is labeled measured or company-reported, with its source, region and month. These sources count different things, so we don’t combine them into a single figure. Where nobody publishes reliable data, we say so. Earlier versions reported usage share and referral share together. From October 2026 they’re measured and shown separately. Next update: January 2027.
Hundreds of millions of people use AI assistants, and those assistants send websites a small share of traffic that grew through 2026. Some of their influence may never show up in a referral report, and how we read it is on our measurement page. ChatGPT sends most of the clicks, while people on phones, at work and on Google spread across several assistants.
For a business, the practical steps are to check the reports you already have, find out which assistants your buyers use, and read any single number as one source’s view at one point in time.
If this report is the kind of source you want Google to lean on, you can tell it so.
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