The Future of Search.

In brief

People are adding AI to their searching, not swapping search out.

AI use is now a habit. Pew's February 2026 survey found 44 per cent of US adults have used ChatGPT, up from 18 per cent in 2023. Yet Similarweb estimates that about 95 per cent of ChatGPT users also used Google in May 2026, and google.com drew 3.19 billion monthly unique visitors against 0.46 billion for chatgpt.com between December 2025 and February 2026.

The pressure falls on the click more than on the query. In Pew's observed browsing data from March 2025, people clicked a traditional result on 15 per cent of visits without an AI summary and on 8 per cent with one. A search engine can keep answering questions while sending fewer visitors to the websites that supplied the answer.

The report covers how search is changing, who captures the value (Google, its competitors, publishers and merchants), what regulators in the UK and India have actually required as against only studied, and three scenarios. aFactor's base case: by 2031, AI-led experiences could handle about three-quarters of general-purpose information-seeking journeys, with much of that activity still happening inside search engines. The report labels that split as aFactor judgment, not measured market share.

Every chart uses published observations unless it is marked as an aFactor scenario. Each claim is labelled as observed, company-reported or aFactor analysis, and all 42 sources are listed with dates.