Pew Research Center — 18% of Google searches in March 2025 produced an AI summary (68,879 searches across 900 US adults; independent anchor)
Created 2026-06-21
Summary
Claim: Pew Research Center (Athena Chapekis), analysing the browsing data of 900 US adults across 68,879 Google searches: "Some 18% of all the Google searches in our study generated an AI summary as part of the search results."
Source: https://pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/ — Jul 22, 2025.
Confidence: Verified (independent research org; no commercial incentive).
Why this matters for Candid: This is the anchor figure for AI-overview prevalence and the cleanest defence against vendor-inflated numbers. Use Pew as the level estimate; cite vendor trackers as the range (R6 — Cite Pew as the AI-prevalence anchor; cite vendor trackers (Semrush / BrightEdge / Conductor) as a range; never cite a single vendor as the level).
Related entries
Referenced by (10)
- reference Research brief: the website as a working surface of the business — four capabilities, AI-citation decoupling, freshness as a real signal (June 2026) relates-to
- reference Pew Research Center — 58% of US adults studied conducted at least one Google search in March 2025 that produced an AI-generated summary relates-to
- reference Pew — when an AI summary appears, users click a traditional link 8% of the time vs 15% without; only 1% click a link inside the summary relates-to
- reference Pew — 26% of users ended the search session after seeing an AI summary vs 16% without relates-to
- reference Semrush — AI Overview prevalence on 10M+ keywords rose 6.49% (Jan 2025) → peak ~24.61% (Jul 2025) → ~15.69% (Nov 2025) relates-to
- reference BrightEdge — ~48% of tracked queries showed an AI Overview by Feb–Mar 2026, up from ~31% a year earlier relates-to
- reference Conductor (21.9M queries) — AI Overview share at 25.11%, up from 13.14% in March 2025 relates-to
- reference Reconciliation: the 16% / 25% / 48% AI-prevalence gap is largely definitional — different keyword samples, "tracked queries" vs all queries, niche / long-tail inclusion depends-on
- reference Caveats for the working-surface brief: independent anchors (Pew, peer-reviewed GEO paper, Ahrefs large-N) carry the load; vendor figures are range / corroboration, not independent confirmation relates-to
- rule R6 — Cite Pew as the AI-prevalence anchor; cite vendor trackers (Semrush / BrightEdge / Conductor) as a range; never cite a single vendor as the level depends-on