ChatGPT gets approximately 5.6 billion visits per month.
FIVE. POINT. SIX. BILLION.
That’s an incomprehensibly large number.
The platform also averages between 700 and 800 million active weekly users.
And that’s just one of the many LLMs (large-language models) people are using daily as a search engine.
Between ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity and Deepseek, users have so many options when it comes to which AI search engine is right for them.
Even Google themselves, with Gemini’s AI overviews, have tanked site click-through rates, which is why 60% of Google searches now end without a click. It’s also probably the reason that your SEO hasn’t performed as well over the recent months.
It’s more important than ever that you understand both how LLMs work and how generative engine optimisation (GEO) is reshaping the future of SEO. So, to help you wrap your head around it, we’re going to run through some stats. They’ll show you how search behaviour is changing, and what this means for your business and ongoing search strategy.
Oh, and before we get into the thick of it, I’ll add this: all stats were verifiable at the time of writing (April 2026). The AI landscape is changing at breakneck speeds, so please do bear this in mind while reading!
Let’s jump in.
Learn more: How to improve your website’s GEO
ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude vs Perplexity – the stats, explained
Different AI tools are good for different things. I’ve chosen the “top” four tools here, but there are so many more I could have included.
ChatGPT
- Monthly Visitors: ~5.72 billion
- Weekly Active Users: ~800 million (as of Feb 2025)
- Daily Active Users: ~190 million
- Market Share: ~60% of AI-related web traffic
- Daily Prompts: ~2.5–3 billion
- Paid Users: ~10 million Plus subscribers
Often used as a writing aid or for answering general questions (I ask it what plants I should buy!), ChatGPT’s versatility is what’s made it the most popular LLM in the world.
Source: Views 4 You
Gemini
- Monthly Active Users: ~450 million (as of July 2025)
- Daily Active Users: ~35 million
- Monthly Visits: ~2.06 billion
- Market Share: ~13.5% (US market)
Google’s AI companion is now baked directly into search results, generating the summaries that appear before you’ve even scrolled. It’s particularly good at pulling together information from multiple sources into a single, clear answer.
Source: SQ Magazine
Perplexity
- Monthly Active Users: ~30–33 million
- Monthly Visits: ~170–240 million
- Monthly Queries: ~600–780 million
- Market Share: ~6-11%
Great for scholars and thinkers, Perplexity is the perfect tool for fact-checking and quick, cited answers, as it’s excellent for gathering up-to-date data.
Source: Backlinko
Claude
- Monthly Visitors: ~176 million
- Monthly Active Users: ~30 million (Q2 2025)
- App Active Users: ~7.38 million
- Market Share: ~1-3%
Claude is the poet of the bunch (literally, its models are named Opus, Sonnet and Haiku). It’s a fantastic tool for writers, as its flow and syntax are much more natural than other models. And with the launch of Claude Design, Anthropic are expanding Claude into imagery as well as prose, making it even more versatile than it was before.
Source: Similarweb
What do these LLM stats mean to you?
Chances are, if you’re reading this, you work in an SME or a larger corporation, and you’re looking into how you can remain competitive in a world ruled by robots.
How close am I?
If you take only one thing away from the above stats, it should be this:
AI search is the new default state of play. Billions of people are replacing traditional search engines with AI, and it’s only going to continue growing. You NEED to ensure that your brand is found in AI search engines.
When 60% of searches end without a click, your website is no longer guaranteed to be the destination. In many cases, it isn’t even part of the journey.
People are asking questions within their platform of choice, getting fully-formed answers without ever leaving the page. Your content isn’t being clicked, it’s being consumed, summarised and repurposed.
Which sounds concerning, but it’s not that bad. What you need to do now is learn to play nice with AI tools. Write your content in a way that AI tools love, and they’ll reference you, building your brand passively in the eyes of AI users.
While I won’t be going into detail on how to do this here, we did recently put together a free guide that covers everything I’ve just talked about in significantly more detail. If you want to learn more about how you can ensure your content is being referenced and used by AI tools, click here.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right, stats…
Quick-fire LLM stats
Rather than bog you down in details, here are some of the most pertinent stats available right now, and what they mean for your business.
71.5% of people say they use AI tools for search queries
That’s over two-thirds of the population who are asking AI questions.
These questions range from the casual: “I like X, Y and Z films. Suggest something for me to watch”
To the commercial:
“I need to find a new paper supplier for our marketing agency. Suggest 5 potential businesses in/around Birmingham who have good reviews and experience working with other businesses in my industry.”
If your business isn’t optimised to be easily parsed by AI, it won’t show up as an answer in these types of questions. That’s you out of the running before you’ve even had a chance to pitch.
AI Overviews appear in roughly 15–25% of Google searches (and rising)
Google is actively inserting itself between you and your traffic.
Even if you rank well, your content is being summarised before users reach your site. Visibility now depends on whether you’re included in that summary, not just where you rank beneath it, especially as rank 1 websites now take a few seconds to scroll down to.
Queries with AI Overviews have an 83% zero-click rate
Remember earlier when I said that 60% of searches end without a click? That’s on average.
If there’s an AI overview, the zero-click rate rises to 83%, making it even less likely your content is found (if you’re not featured in the overview itself).
28% of Gen Z use ChatGPT before any other search engine
And on top of this, 68% of Gen Z use “non-traditional search platforms” before Google, which include apps like Tiktok.
If you sell products to a younger audience, this matters.
And if you don’t?
Still matters. Gen Z makes up about 26% of the global workforce, which means their AI habits are going to eventually take over in the workplace, too. You’ve got to prepare now, or get left behind.
66% of people in a 47-country study already use AI regularly, but only 46% trust it
This one’s interesting. Even though so many people use AI on the regular, we really aren’t fully trusting what we’re reading, and for good reason.
AI tends to “hallucinate”, AKA lying to give you the answer you’re after.
Whether it’s false stats or fake websites, AI’s been known to make all sorts of stuff up.
This presents an opportunity to brands willing to do the work. If you publish credible, well-sourced content, you can become a trusted authority for both your audience and for AI tools.
Which leads neatly into…
Now I know what you’re thinking.
“Isn’t this exactly what you’re doing right now?”
Well, yeah. By including stats, being referenceable and, most importantly, being trustworthy, you can build your authority and be featured in AI search engines.
But this is simplifying things a bit.
Another core component of GEO is ensuring that you have high-quality backlinks directed to your key pages. Links from reputable, ideally industry-relevant sites signal to AI (and Google) that your content can be trusted.
This is why Digital PR has exploded in popularity over the last couple of years, as businesses start to understand that getting featured in a journal or industry publication that then links back to your website is gold.
This is all a bit much. Where should you start?
It’s completely understandable if you’re finding much of this overwhelming. It’s genuinely cutting-edge, and it’s really exciting for many of us who are embracing it.
But it does have a learning curve, and quite a steep one at that.
To help you get started, here are five things forward-thinking businesses are doing to adapt to the new AI search reality:
1. They’re structuring content for extraction
AI tools prioritise content they can easily pull from. Clear headings, concise answers and well-organised sections make it more likely your content gets used in responses.
2. They’re answering the question nice and early in their content
Get to the point quickly. AI favours content that provides a clear answer upfront, rather than making it work to find it further down the page.
3. They’re regularly updating content and keeping things fresh
Outdated content loses relevance fast. Regularly updating pages with current information and data improves your chances of being surfaced. You need to factor this into your content plan and revisit any content that might already be showing signs of age.
4. They’re being validated by third-party sources
AI looks beyond your website. Mentions in credible sources, reviews and expert commentary help reinforce your authority and increase visibility.
5. They’re NOT blocking AI crawlers
Some brands have blocked AI bots. I get it, they’re frustrating and often flood your website, slowing it down, but blocking crawlers limits your chances of appearing in AI-generated answers.
Smart brands are building authority across multiple LLMs
If you start now, you’ll begin to see the benefits soon(ish). Like traditional SEO, GEO takes time.
This is because your content needs to be crawled, understood and then regurgitated by AI. If you don’t prioritise this now, you’re already behind.
If you need some advice or just want to chat to someone about GEO in general, we’re here when you need us.
At Catalyst, we have a specialist AI search team. We saw this shift coming early, so we invested heavily in understanding the principles of AI search and applying them to our clients’ marketing strategies.
This has helped us proactively avoid any dips in performance and ensure our clients have continued to grow, where other organisations have stagnated.
If you’d like us to do the same for you, book in a free GEO audit. Just get in touch, let us know what you’re struggling with, and we’ll be in touch with a plan. We’ll let you know what’s working, what’s not and where specifically you need to focus in order to get your brand ranking in AI search engines.
