Local SEO, Google Ads and AI Search Statistics for 2026

What do the numbers say about local search, Google Ads and AI search in 2026? More than half of local searches start on Google Search, most on a phone, about two in three Google searches end without a click, and a small but growing share of buyers ask AI tools for recommendations.

By Donnie Strompf. Updated October 2026.

Method note. Every statistic is one sentence with its publisher and year, linked to the original page, which was read in October 2026. Where an original was paywalled or gone, the figure was left out. Google Help pages carry no date, so the year shown for them is the year they were read.

Key takeaways

• Local searches start on Google Search more than anywhere else, and most start on a phone.
• The research covers how shoppers use reviews and how often AI answers cite Google Business Profiles, so profile completeness and recent reviews matter in both.
• Search ad costs vary widely by industry, so a national average is a poor budget guide.
• Studies report fewer clicks on traditional results when an AI summary appears, and AI referral traffic is still a small share of total visits.
• Page speed studies point the same way: faster mobile pages convert better, and many sites still miss Google’s thresholds.

Local search statistics

Google Search is the most common starting point for local searches, and the figures below show how many begin on a phone. Check whether your business details match across the places customers use to find you.

• 84% of US consumers searched online for a local business in the previous three months, in a survey of 1,227 consumers (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 52% of those consumers started their most recent local business search on Google Search and 9% started on Google Maps (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 73% of them started that search on a mobile phone, 19% on a computer and 8% on a tablet (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 75% of them used more than one channel during that search (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 91% of US adults own a smartphone, and 98% own a cellphone of some kind (Pew Research Center, 2025).
• 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click between January and April 2026, up from 60.45% in 2024 (SparkToro, 2026).
• In the 2026 edition of its survey of local search experts, the primary Business Profile category ranked first among local pack factors (score 227), distance between searcher and business second (225) and keywords in the business title third (223) (Whitespark, 2025).
• The number one organic result in Google had an average click-through rate of 27.6%, and the top three results received 54.4% of clicks (Backlinko, 2025).

Read the first four figures together: shoppers use several channels, so the same business details have to match across Google, maps apps, social profiles and review sites. Our local SEO index guide covers the ranking factors in more depth.

For a local business owner, the first lesson is that the phone is the usual starting point. Searchers see your Business Profile, your hours and your phone number before they see your website. Open your own profile and site on a phone, and check that the number, the address and the main button work. A listing that looks fine on a desktop can hide the one thing a phone searcher wants.

Google Business Profile and reviews statistics

Google says a complete profile changes how customers see a business, and the review surveys show how closely shoppers read what others wrote. Review figures come from surveys, which record what people say they do.

• Customers who find a complete Business Profile on Google are 70% more likely to visit, according to Google (Google Business Profile Help, 2026).
• Those customers are also 2.7 times more likely to consider the business reputable and 50% more likely to consider buying from it, according to Google (Google Business Profile Help, 2026).
• Google Business Profile made up 563,272 of 1,967,762 citations (28.63%) in a study of Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and ChatGPT answers for more than 1,300 business locations; BrightLocal’s summary text gives 28.5%, and this figure is from its data table (BrightLocal, 2026).
• Yelp made up 187,599 of those citations (9.53%, from the data table; BrightLocal’s summary text gives 8.53%) (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 97% of consumers say reviews guide their purchase decisions, in a survey of 1,002 US adults (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 71% of consumers use Google to read reviews, down from 83% in 2025 (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 68% of consumers will only use a business rated four stars or higher, up from 55% in 2025, and 31% require 4.5 stars or higher, up from 17% (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 74% of consumers only care about reviews written in the last three months (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 47% of consumers will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 89% of consumers expect business owners to respond to reviews, and 42% are unlikely to use a business that ignores its reviews entirely (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 54% of consumers check a business’s website after reading positive reviews (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 45% of consumers left a Google review in the past year, compared with 34% for Facebook and 24% for Yelp (BrightLocal, 2026).
• In a study of online product reviews, purchase likelihood was 270% greater for a product with five reviews than for one with none, and it peaked at ratings between 4.0 and 4.7 stars (Spiegel Research Center, 2017).

The Spiegel study covers products, not local services, so treat it as direction. Three of the review figures describe things a business can check today: how many reviews it has, how recent the newest one is and whether the owner has replied. Compare your profile with those three before you read anything into the averages. Our guide to Google reviews lists the review methods Google allows.

What this means for an owner: reviews and profile completeness are the two inputs you control without paying for ads. Ask recent customers for reviews through the methods Google allows, reply to every review, and fill in the profile sections Google lists on its help page. The survey figures show that shoppers apply thresholds for rating, count and recency, so a profile that falls short on any one of them may be passed over before the shopper reads a word.

Google Ads statistics

Search ad benchmarks vary widely by industry. Your cost per click depends on your market, your keywords and your landing page, so use these to sanity-check a plan before you set a budget.

• The average cost per click for search advertising across all industries in 2026 is $5.42 (LocaliQ, 2026).
• The average click-through rate for search advertising across industries in 2026 is 6.64% (LocaliQ, 2026).
• The average conversion rate for Google Ads across industries in 2026 is 8.18% (LocaliQ, 2026).
• The average cost per lead for search advertising in 2026 is $66.69 (LocaliQ, 2026).
• Paid click-through rate on informational queries was 13.88% with no AI Overview, 4.14% with an AI Overview that did not cite the brand and 7.89% when it did, in a Seer Interactive study of 3,119 terms across 42 client organizations (Seer Interactive, 2025).

Calculated from LocaliQ’s figures below, cost per click for attorneys is more than double the figure for physicians, and cost per lead is more than three times as high ($131.63 against $40.04).

Industry	Cost per click	Conversion rate	Cost per lead
Attorneys and legal services	$9.87	5.55%	$131.63
Home and home improvement	$8.33	8.05%	$90.92
Dentists and dental services	$8.00	10.67%	$72.97
Physicians and surgeons	$4.76	12.43%	$40.04

Source for the table: LocaliQ search advertising benchmarks, 2026 (LocaliQ, 2026). The budget question belongs in our guide on how much to spend on Google Ads, and the work around the clicks is on the PPC services page. The cost side has its own guide: How much digital marketing costs for a small business.

What this means for an owner: a cost per click sounds small until you divide it by your own conversion rate. Work out how many clicks your site needs to produce one lead, and what a lead is worth to you, before you judge any benchmark. The Seer figures also show that paid click-through rate is lower when an AI Overview appears, so watch your click trend on queries that now show one.

Local Services Ads statistics

Local Services Ads charge per lead, and Google’s help pages define what counts as one. These are the numbers Google publishes, so check the page itself before you rely on a rule, because Google changes them.

• A missed call counts as a valid lead when the customer stays on the line for more than 20 seconds (Google Local Services Help, 2026).
• Charged leads are reassessed over a 30-day assessment period and may be credited automatically if judged low quality (Google Local Services Help, 2026).
• Follow-up contacts from the same phone number or email within 15 days of interaction are not charged again (Google Local Services Help, 2026).
• The monthly maximum equals the average weekly budget multiplied by the average number of weeks in a month, and the ad stops showing once that amount is reached (Google Local Services Help, 2026).
• Lead prices vary by location, job type, lead type and bidding mode, and message leads are usually, though not always, cheaper than phone leads (Google Local Services Help, 2026).
• Business screening and verification takes 3 to 4 weeks on average after documents are submitted, according to Google (Google Local Services Help, 2026).

Rules like these sit on Google’s pages and change, so quote the Google page itself when you cite one, and note the date you read it. For the badge steps, see our guide to getting Google Verified on Local Services Ads, and for setup help see our Local Services Ads service page.

What this means for an owner: you pay for leads, so lead handling is part of the cost. Answer the phone, learn how to dispute a lead that looks invalid, and watch the monthly maximum, because the ad stops showing once it is reached. Start verification early, since Google describes the process in weeks.

AI search and AI referral statistics

AI summaries change what happens after a search, and AI assistants are a small but measurable source of visits. The figures below disagree on size because the studies measure different sites and different months. When someone asks ChatGPT who to call, the business it names is the one that gets searched next. We do AI visibility alongside SEO, never instead of it.

• Pew Research Center found that users clicked a traditional result link in 8% of visits where Google showed an AI summary, against 15% of visits without one (Pew Research Center, 2025).
• Users ended their browsing session after 26% of pages with an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages with only traditional results (Pew Research Center, 2025).
• Ahrefs measured the top-ranking page’s average click-through rate in December 2025 across 300,000 keywords and found it 58% lower where an AI Overview was present (Ahrefs, 2026).
• AI Overviews appeared on 6.49% of tracked queries in January 2025, 24.61% in July and 15.69% in November (Semrush, 2025).
• AI Overviews appeared on 25.11% of about 21.9 million US searches analyzed between September 15 and October 12, 2025, from 48.7% in health care to 4.4% in real estate, using the report’s section figures, while its takeaways list 48.75% and 4.48% (Conductor, 2026).
• Organic click-through rate on informational queries was 1.45% with no AI Overview and 0.52% with an AI Overview that did not cite the brand (Seer Interactive, 2025).
• Brands cited in an AI Overview earned 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than brands that were not cited, though Seer says it cannot prove citation caused the difference (Seer Interactive, 2025).
• 34% of US adults have used ChatGPT, including 58% of adults under 30 and 10% of those 65 and older (Pew Research Center, 2025).
• About half of US adults do not use AI chatbots at all, and 87% have at least heard a little about them, up from 72% in 2024 (Pew Research Center, 2026).
• ChatGPT had 700 million weekly active users in September 2025, and about 70% of consumer usage was non-work (OpenAI, 2025).
• Google AI Mode has passed 1 billion monthly active users since expanding globally in October 2025, and the Gemini app has 950 million (Alphabet, 2026).
• Use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% to 45% of consumers in a year (BrightLocal, 2026).
• 31% of consumers use AI tools for local business recommendations at least monthly, and only 8% chose AI as their first channel for a local search (BrightLocal, 2026).
• In March 2026, 74,752 tracked websites received 3.5 million visits from AI chatbots, a 0.28% slice of their total traffic, according to Ahrefs (Ahrefs, 2026).
• AI referral traffic accounted for 1.08% of all website traffic across 10 industries in a study of 1,215 enterprise domains, and ChatGPT supplied 87.4% of it (Conductor, 2026).
• The average AI search visitor was 4.4 times as valuable as the average traditional organic search visitor, based on conversion rate (Semrush, 2025).
• Traffic to US retail websites from generative AI sources rose 1,300% year over year in November and December 2024, with a 23% lower bounce rate and a 9% lower likelihood to convert than other traffic (Adobe, 2025).

Ahrefs reported 0.28% and Conductor 1.08%. The samples differ, so each figure describes only its own sample. For the how-to, read our guide to what answer engine optimization is and our comparison of how AI search engines choose sources. To measure your own share, see how to track ChatGPT traffic in Google Analytics.

What this means for an owner: studies report fewer clicks on ordinary results when an AI summary appears, so being named in those summaries may matter, and the Seer figures suggest cited brands do better than uncited ones, though Seer cautions against reading that as cause.

Keep your Business Profile and listings consistent, because the BrightLocal citation study found Business Profile and directory pages among the sources AI answers cite, and keep measuring visits from AI tools in your own analytics. The shares are small today, and the BrightLocal survey shows the habit spreading.

Websites and speed statistics

Google measures page experience with Core Web Vitals, and the studies below tie faster pages to more sales and leads. Several of them are case studies, so read them as direction for your own tests.

• 48% of mobile websites and 56% of desktop websites had good Core Web Vitals in July 2025 data (HTTP Archive, 2025).
• 62% of mobile pages and 74% of desktop pages achieved a good Largest Contentful Paint score (HTTP Archive, 2025).
• 77% of mobile websites achieved a good Interaction to Next Paint score, and 81% of mobile pages achieved a good Cumulative Layout Shift score (HTTP Archive, 2025).
• Retail consumers spent 9.2% more after a 0.1 second improvement in mobile site speed measures, in a 30-day monitoring study at the end of 2019 commissioned by Google and conducted by 55 and Deloitte (55 and Deloitte for Google, 2020).
• The same study found a 21.6% increase in users reaching the form submission page on lead generation sites (55 and Deloitte for Google, 2020).
• A 31% improvement in Largest Contentful Paint led to 8% more sales for Vodafone, with a 15% uplift in lead-to-visit rate (web.dev, 2021).

The 2019 monitoring window is several years old, so use the direction of the result and test your own pages. Speed is one part of technical SEO. Our guide to technical SEO explains the rest, and the SEO pillar guide shows where it fits in a plan.

What this means for an owner: speed work pays off most when it starts with the pages that carry your calls and forms. Run those pages through Google’s PageSpeed Insights or the Search Console Core Web Vitals report, fix the slowest elements on mobile first, and test again. Confirm any gain on your own pages before you rely on it.

How do you check these numbers against your own business?

Compare these benchmarks with your own reports before changing your budget or strategy. Pair each group of figures above with one report you already have or can open for free. Compare like with like: the same date range, the same device, and the same definition of a lead.

If the statistic is about	Open this report	What to compare
Device and search start	Google Analytics device report	Your share of mobile visits
Searches without a click	Search Console Performance report	Impressions against clicks for your pages
Profile and reviews	Business Profile Performance and your reviews list	Review count, newest review date, owner replies
Ad costs	Google Ads campaign report	Cost per conversion by campaign
Local Services Ads leads	Leads page in your Local Services Ads account	Charged and credited leads
AI referrals	Google Analytics traffic acquisition report	Sessions from chatgpt.com and similar sources
Page speed	Search Console Core Web Vitals report	Pages rated good on mobile

Write down the date range you used, because a small business can see a swing of a few visits in either direction. If the gap between your number and a study is large, check your tracking before you change your strategy. Our guide to conversion tracking for service businesses covers the setup, and the Google Search Console tips page covers the reports.

For prices that sit next to these benchmarks, see our guides to what Google Ads management costs and what SEO costs for a small business.

Good At Marketing is based in Boynton Beach and works with businesses across Palm Beach County.

How to cite this page

Cite as: Good At Marketing, “Local SEO, Google Ads and AI Search Statistics for 2026,” updated October 2026, https://goodatmarketing.com/local-seo-google-ads-and-ai-search-statistics/. Link the original publisher for any single figure, because each source updates its own page.

FAQ

Can I quote these statistics on my own site?

Yes, with attribution. Name the original publisher and year next to each figure and link to its page, as this page does. Check the original before you publish, because publishers revise their pages and a figure here may have changed since the date at the top.

Why do the AI traffic figures differ?

Ahrefs and Conductor measured different sets of websites in different months, so their shares do not line up. One used tens of thousands of mixed sites and the other enterprise domains. Your own analytics is the number to act on, and our guide to tracking ChatGPT traffic shows how to read it.

Are these figures specific to Florida or to Boynton Beach?

No. They are national or global studies, mostly of US consumers. None is limited to Palm Beach County. For a local view, compare these figures with your own Search Console, Business Profile Performance and call data, which show how your market behaves.

Which statistic matters most for a small business?

The ones tied to things you control: how complete your Business Profile is, how many recent reviews you have, how quickly your pages load on a phone and whether your calls and forms are tracked. National averages for ads and AI traffic give context only.

How often does this page change?

The date under the title shows the last update. The year beside each figure is the year its publisher released it, or the year we read the page where no date is given. Publishers revise their pages, so check the original for a newer edition before you quote a number.

Related reading

• How Small Businesses Can Use Google Search Console to Find Missed Keyword Opportunities
• What a monthly marketing report should include, and how to check it yourself

Next step

To work from these numbers, see our SEO services, meet Donnie Strompf and read the pricing page.

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