Reference
The Numbers
The load-bearing statistics of the beat. Every figure carries its source and its date, because numbers in this industry age in months — an undated statistic is a rumor with digits.
Every figure below appeared in a published wire item and was verified against its source then. Updated as new studies run.
Who gets cited
- 21.1%
YouTube's mention share in Google AI Overviews — the most-cited domain, ahead of Reddit (18.5%), Facebook (10.7%), Google itself (7.1%) and Instagram (5.8%).
Ahrefs, 2026-07 · on the wire · source ↗
- #2
Google's own rank among the most-cited domains in AI Mode answers, driven by Google-hosted Business Profile and Product Knowledge Panel cards.
Search Engine Journal, 2026-07 · on the wire · source ↗
- 50,000
Brands in Semrush's ChatGPT visibility analysis, which found most topics still have no clearly dominant brand — visibility accrues at the topic level.
Semrush, 2026-07 vendor study · on the wire · source ↗
Traffic and money
- billions
Weekly clicks Google says its AI Search features send to websites — a claim published without methodology, against third-party studies showing CTR declines.
Search Engine Journal, 2026-07 no methodology published · on the wire · source ↗
- $63.27B
Alphabet's Q2 2026 Search revenue, up 17% year over year — the first deceleration after four quarters of accelerating growth.
Search Engine Journal, 2026-07 · on the wire · source ↗
- 1 in 3
Commercial-keyword AI Mode queries showing ads in a July analysis — while advertisers were rarely among the answer's cited sources.
Search Engine Journal, 2026-07 · on the wire · source ↗
What people ask
- 14.65M
Conversations in Google's AI & Economy ATLAS report, which found AI questions about government services occur roughly 20x more often than time spent on them would predict.
Google / Search Engine Journal, 2026-07 vendor study · on the wire · source ↗
- ~50%
Share of medical, legal, financial and government queries to Google's AI surfaces arriving outside work hours — high-friction tasks, handled at night and on weekends.
Google / Search Engine Journal, 2026-07 vendor study · on the wire · source ↗
Readiness and adoption
- 15.6%
Average share of AI retrievability and trust criteria met by 71 audited small businesses — and 17% had no AI-retrievable digital presence at all.
Search Engine Land, 2026-07 · on the wire · source ↗
- 137,000
Domains in Ahrefs' llms.txt adoption analysis — the dataset behind its free llms.txt generator.
Ahrefs, 2026-07 · on the wire · source ↗
- 45
Studies in the first critical survey of generative engine optimization research, 2023–2026 — the discipline now has a literature.
arXiv, 2026-07 · on the wire · source ↗