Plain answers about AI search, each one traced to its source.

Yes, where AI answers appear.

On keywords that show a Google AI Overview, the top organic result’s click-through rate fell from 7.3% to 1.6% between December 2023 and December 2025. In a controlled experiment, switching people to AI Mode cut their clicks to publishers by 18.8 percentage points.

Source: Ahrefs, 300,000 keywords. Preregistered field experiment with 1,100 participants.

The evidence

• The position-1 CTR collapse: from 7.3% to 1.6% in two years6 min
• 18.8 points lost, 8.8 recovered. Only one was measured cleanly.6 min
• The zero-click rate is 46.96%. The average is the least useful part.5 min

Less than you would think.

61.7% of the pages AI chatbots cite sit outside Google’s organic top 100 for the same query. Rank tracking cannot see most of the places AI citations go.

Source: Profound, 340 million prompts.

The evidence

• Ghost citations: 61.7% of AI citations rank outside the organic top 1005 min
• AI search visibility statistics 2026: every verified number, sourced8 min

It prefers recently edited pages.

Of AI-cited pages with both dates readable, 72% looked fresh by their last update, but only 42% were first published within the past year. The freshness comes from editing old pages, not from publishing new ones.

Source: Seer Interactive, 7,683 pages cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

The evidence

• The freshness illusion: why AI cites edited pages, not new ones6 min

Small, but it converts.

ChatGPT referrals converted at 15.9%, against 1.76% for organic search. Most AI visits are invisible in analytics: 70.6% arrive with no referrer and show up as Direct.

Source: Orbit Media, 446,000 AI visits.

The evidence

• AI referral traffic is small, and converts at 9x the organic rate6 min

No evidence that it does.

One cited URL in 94,614 came from an llms.txt page, and Google says on the record that its AI systems do not use the file. Of 584,107 llms.txt files in one crawl, 68.27% were templated.

Source: Allmo citation analysis, June 2026. Common Crawl, July 2026 crawl.

The evidence

• llms.txt does not work: 1 cited URL in 94,6145 min
• 584,107 llms.txt files. 68.27% templated. 22.56% contain no links.12 min

Not with ads, on current evidence.

Ads appeared on 25.94% of 50,006 commercial ChatGPT prompts. The advertiser was missing from the answer’s own cited sources 96.37% of the time.

Source: SE Ranking, 50,006 prompts. The only public measurement so far.

The evidence

• ChatGPT ads reached five more countries. The ad rarely buys the citation.6 min

Partly, and the trade is hard to measure.

Google’s new Search Console opt-out removes a site from AI Overviews and AI Mode, but its reporting carries no clicks. In one index, 39.5% of sites that disallow OpenAI’s GPTBot still served it a page.

Source: Google Search Console documentation. AI Crawler Block Index raw counts.

The evidence

• Google shipped the AI opt-out without the data to use it6 min
• 39.5% and 47.1% describe the same test. One has the wrong denominator.7 min
• Cloudflare set four conditions for Googlebot. It names nobody who meets them.9 min

Check the source first.

Most numbers we traced were real, but changed on the way: a new denominator, a dropped range, a different firm credited. A LinkedIn post quoted 93% where its source printed 92%. A Reuters Institute explainer attached Pew’s 1% AI Overview click rate to over 68,000 searches, where Pew prints the base for it as 12,593.

Source: Our traces of quoted statistics back to their primary source, since July 2026.

The evidence

• Pew's 1% counts 12,593 searches. The sentence quoting it says 68,000.10 min
• LinkedIn's VP quotes 93%. The report he cites prints 92%.9 min
• The release says 60%. The study it links says 68.01%.6 min