Blog · November 10, 2026 · 10 min read
Local SEO and AI Search Statistics for 2026, Each Checked at Its Source
By Kasen Sansonetti, founder of Wetware Labs
Key findings
- Google searches in the US ended without a click 68.01% of the time between January and April 2026, according to SparkToro's analysis of Similarweb data.
- When Google showed an AI summary, US adults clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits, against 15% without one, according to Pew Research Center's March 2025 browsing data.
- 45% of US consumers use ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier, according to BrightLocal's February 2026 survey of 1,002 adults.
- Across 75,000 brands, mentions around the web tracked a brand's appearance in Google's AI Overviews more than twice as strongly as Domain Rating did (0.664 against 0.326), according to Ahrefs.
- Bing had 9.76% of US searches in October 2026, StatCounter reports, against 85.45% for Google.
- In our own count of 545,306 local service businesses across the 50 largest US metros, Miami is the most crowded market and Memphis the least.
- The most repeated local search number, that 46% of Google searches have local intent, traces to a 2018 tweet about a conference presentation. We found no Google publication behind it.
I'm writing this because the local SEO statistics pages I open repeat the same numbers, a few of them years old and some with no link to where they came from. Statistics pages work like a game of telephone: each one copies the last, and by the tenth copy nobody remembers who said it first. So we walked back down the line and opened each source ourselves.
This page has 18 statistics on search, AI answers and local customers. Sixteen link to the publisher's own page and carry the date, the sample and what the number does not show. Two are ours, from a count of local businesses we ran on Census data. We checked every source on October 27, 2026 and refreshed StatCounter to October on November 1. The CSV at the bottom has all 44 data points, free to use with credit.
By the end you'll have numbers you can quote safely, three popular ones to leave out, and our read on what they mean for a local business.
How many Google searches end without a click?
| Statistic | Source | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click, January to April 2026 | SparkToro, June 9, 2026 | Similarweb desktop and mobile web panel. A click counts ads and Google's own properties, not a follow-up search. The 2024 figure was 60.45%, from a different panel (Datos), and SparkToro calls the comparison "a bit of apples and oranges." It leaves out the Google mobile app. |
How much do AI answers cut clicks to websites?
| Statistic | Source | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| 8% of visits ended in a click on a traditional result when Google showed an AI summary, against 15% when it did not | Pew Research Center, July 22, 2025 | Browsing data from 900 US adults in March 2025; 68,879 unique Google searches. |
| 1% of visits to pages with an AI summary included a click on a link inside the summary | Pew Research Center, July 22, 2025 | Same sample as above. |
| Users ended their browsing session right after the results page on 26% of pages with an AI summary, against 16% of pages with only traditional results | Pew Research Center, July 22, 2025 | Same sample as above. |
| An AI Overview correlates with a 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page | Ahrefs, February 4, 2026 | 300,000 keywords: 150,000 with an AI Overview and 150,000 informational keywords without one. Google Search Console, desktop only. Position one CTR in December 2025 was 0.016 with an AI Overview and 0.039 without. Ahrefs notes the groups were not identical before AI Overviews existed, so this is a comparison, not proof of cause. |
Short version: when Google answers the question itself, about half the clicks go away.
How many people use AI search?
| Statistic | Source | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| More than 1 billion monthly active users for Google's AI Mode since it expanded globally last October (2025) | Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call, Sundar Pichai, July 22, 2026 | Company-reported. On the same call Pichai said AI features in Search were "sending billions of clicks to websites every week." |
| 950 million monthly active users for the Gemini app | Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call, Sundar Pichai, July 22, 2026 | Company-reported. |
| 45% of US consumers use ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier | BrightLocal, February 11, 2026 | Survey of 1,002 US adults, via SurveyMonkey. |
How do local customers choose a business?
| Statistic | Source | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses | BrightLocal, February 11, 2026 | Same survey, 1,002 US adults. |
| 31% will only use a business rated 4.5 stars or higher, up from 17% in 2025 | BrightLocal, February 11, 2026 | Same survey. |
| The average consumer uses six review sites when choosing a business | BrightLocal, February 11, 2026 | Same survey. |
| Google's share as a review source dipped from 83% to 71%, and Apple Maps usage nearly doubled from 14% to 27% | BrightLocal, February 11, 2026 | Same survey, 2025 against 2026. |
| 42% of consumers trust AI recommendations as much as traditional reviews | BrightLocal, February 11, 2026 | Same survey. |
What goes along with a brand showing up in Google's AI Overviews?
| Statistic | Source | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Mentions of a brand around the web correlated 0.664 with the brand appearing in Google AI Overviews. Branded anchors scored 0.527, branded search volume 0.392, Domain Rating 0.326, referring domains 0.295 and backlinks 0.218 | Ahrefs, May 26, 2025 | 75,000 brands, Spearman correlation. Domains above DR 40, each brand's top keyword with at least 800 monthly searches. About 26% of brands had no AI Overview mentions and were left out. A correlation is not proof of cause. |
Does Bing matter?
| Statistic | Source | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Bing had 9.76% of US searches in October 2026. Google had 85.45%, Yahoo! 2.54% and DuckDuckGo 1.75% | StatCounter, October 2026 | United States, all platforms (desktop, mobile, tablet, console). StatCounter measures traffic across the sites that use its tracking code. Bing was 9.91% in September. |
Small next to Google, but Bing is the index Microsoft's Copilot searches, so a Bing Places listing is a second door into AI answers.
What ranks a local business on the map?
| Statistic | Source | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Local search experts ranked these as the top factors for the local pack and Maps: 1 primary Google Business Profile category, 2 distance from the searcher, 3 keywords in the business title, 4 a physical address in the city searched, 5 being open at the time of the search. High ratings came 6th and the number of Google reviews with text 9th | Whitespark, November 6, 2025 | Survey of 47 local search experts weighing 187 factors. It measures expert opinion, not Google's formula. |
How crowded is the local market?
These two are ours: a count of every local service business with employees in the 50 largest US metros, from the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns. The full ranking and method are in Where Local Businesses Face the Most Competition.
| Statistic | Source | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Miami is the most crowded of the 50 largest US metros for local service businesses (index 82.3 of 100) and Memphis the least (11.4) | Wetware Labs, Local Competition Index, November 2026 | 545,306 establishments with paid employees in twelve trades, per resident, from Census County Business Patterns 2023 and Vintage 2024 population estimates. The index averages each metro's rank in the twelve trades. One-person businesses are not counted. |
| Denver has one roofing company with employees for every 6,152 residents; Las Vegas has one for every 45,275, a 7.4x gap, the widest of the twelve trades | Wetware Labs, Local Competition Index, November 2026 | Same data. An establishment is a location, so a company with five offices counts five times. |
What do these numbers mean for a local business?
Our read: fewer searches end on your website, but people still choose a business the same way. They read reviews (97%), they check several sites (six on average), and almost half now ask an AI tool for a recommendation. The click is shrinking. The choice isn't.
So the job moves from winning the click to being the answer wherever someone asks. In practice that's the basics done completely: the right primary category on your Google Business Profile (the top factor in Whitespark's survey), steady reviews, the same name, phone and hours on every site, a Bing Places listing, and other sites that mention you, the strongest signal in Ahrefs' AI Overview study. None of it is new. What's new is that skipping it now costs you twice: once in the map and once in the AI answer.
Back to the telephone. An AI answer is the last person in the line. It repeats what the sites before it said about you. If those sites disagree, or say nothing, so will it.
What would change our mind:
- If independent panels, like the next SparkToro or Pew study, show clicks per search climbing back, as Alphabet says its AI features are "sending billions of clicks", we'd put more weight back on the website itself.
- The jump from 6% to 45% in AI use for local recommendations comes from one survey. If a second survey doesn't find something close, we'd treat it as a high reading, not the trend.
- Whitespark's ranking factors are expert opinion. A controlled test that ranks them differently would win.
What can you do with this today?
- Find the answers taking your clicks. In Google Search Console, open Performance and sort your queries by impressions. Many impressions and few clicks usually means an answer box or the map is taking the click, so make sure your Business Profile is the one winning there.
- Ask the assistants. Search your main service and your town on your phone and note the three businesses in the map. Then ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot who they would recommend, and write the names down.
- Check your stars. 31% of consumers only use a business rated 4.5 or higher. Know which side of that line you're on, and ask every happy customer for a review.
- Claim Bing Places. It can import your Google profile, so it takes a few minutes.
- Make your facts match. Name, phone and hours, the same on Google, Bing, Apple Business Connect, Facebook and Yelp. Apple Maps use for reviews nearly doubled in a year.
Which popular local SEO numbers should you leave out?
This is where the telephone line runs out.
"46% of Google searches have local intent." The trail ends at a tweet. On October 10, 2018, an SEO posted that a Google rep's official presentation at a Secrets of Local Search event said so. Search Engine Roundtable ran it a week later and wrote, "all I have is a tweet." We found no Google publication behind it (Search Engine Roundtable, October 17, 2018). A March 2026 roundup credits it to "Google / GoGulf 2026" with no link, and BrightLocal's own statistics page cites the 2018 article and says a newer figure is hard to find.
"Customers are 2.7 times more likely to consider a business reputable if its Google Business Profile is complete." Google's help page also says 70% more likely to visit and 50% more likely to consider buying. The page gives no source, sample or date, so nobody can check it.
"Zero-click searches rose from 60% to 68%." Both SparkToro figures are real, but they come from different panels (Datos in 2024, Similarweb in 2026). The direction is probably right. The size of the jump is not something to quote.
How did we check these?
- We opened each publisher's own page and copied the number, the sample, the date and the caveats the publisher states. For Alphabet we read its published call transcript, and for StatCounter we used its own CSV export for the US, all platforms, October 2026.
- Our two numbers come from Census County Business Patterns 2023; the method is in the metro ranking.
- Company-reported numbers, like Alphabet's AI Mode and Gemini users, are labeled as such. Surveys and panels have biases their authors describe, and we pass those along.
- A correlation, like Ahrefs' study of brand mentions, is not proof of cause.
- We re-check every number monthly. If you find a mistake, email kasen@wetwarelabs.io and we'll fix it and date the fix here.
Download the data
The data is free to use with credit.
- Every number in this post (CSV): the statistic, value, publisher, date, source link, sample, a short exact quote and the caveat.
Cite this page: Wetware Labs, Local SEO and AI Search Statistics for 2026 (November 2026). https://wetwarelabs.io/blog/local-seo-ai-search-statistics-2026
Reporters: if you want a number checked, or a cut of our data for your market, email kasen@wetwarelabs.io.
If you want to know which of these numbers matters most in your own market, that's what our SEO audits measure.