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The AI search statistics that matter most for healthcare marketers show three things: AI answers now reach billions of searchers, patients use them to research care and choose providers, and the clicks they send are small but growing. Each figure below comes with its source, method and date. Curve Compliance helps healthcare brands see and improve how they show up in these answers. AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. The managed service is Curve AEO, where a team handles the strategy and the work for you.
Want to see how often AI answers name your brand for the questions your patients ask? Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.
For deeper data, see ChatGPT statistics, AI Overviews statistics for healthcare searches and zero-click searches in healthcare. Curve AEO is built on the questions these studies ask: who the answer names, which sites it cites, and what patients do next.
Key takeaways
- AI search is big and growing. Google says AI Overviews has over 2.5 billion monthly active users (Google), and OpenAI says ChatGPT serves more than 1 billion weekly active users (OpenAI).
- Patients already use it for health. 32% of U.S. adults used AI for health information and advice in the past year (KFF).
- It shapes provider choice. Among patients who searched for a new doctor, 36% said AI tools influenced their decision, ahead of Google search results at 34% (rater8).
- Health searches get more AI Overviews. Conductor found them on 48.7% of the page-one Google queries in its health care set, the highest of 10 industries (Conductor); BrightEdge found them on 89% of the healthcare keywords it tracks (BrightEdge).
- AI clicks are still a small slice. AI referrals were 0.64% of health care website traffic, and ChatGPT sent 83.8% of them (Conductor).
- Most searches end without a click. In the first four months of 2026, 68.01% of U.S. Google searches did (SparkToro).
- Trust is thin. Only 4% of recent AI health users strongly trust the accuracy of AI health information (Gallup).
How many people use AI search
These are company statements, global and not audited, so treat each as that company's own count. Google says AI Mode "has surpassed one billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch" (Google). OpenAI's own research paper says that by July 2025 ChatGPT users were "sending more than 2.5 billion messages per day" (OpenAI and David Deming, NBER).
| What was measured | Figure | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT weekly active users | More than 1 billion | August 2026 | OpenAI |
| ChatGPT search usage | Nearly tripled in a year | March 2026 | OpenAI |
| ChatGPT messages per day | More than 2.5 billion | July 2025 | OpenAI, NBER paper |
| Google AI Overviews monthly active users | Over 2.5 billion | May 2026 | Google I/O 2026 |
| Google AI Mode monthly users | Surpassed one billion | May 2026 | |
| Gemini app users | One billion | October 2026 | Google Q3 2026 remarks |
| Perplexity queries | 169 million per month | Perplexity's own figure, more than two years old | Perplexity |
| U.S. adults who have ever used ChatGPT | 34%, including 58% of adults under 30 | Early 2025 | Pew Research Center |
Google search is growing at the same time. Google says its "year-over-year query growth rate is the highest it's been in the last five years" (Google), while Gartner had predicted that by 2026 "traditional search engine volume will drop 25%" (Gartner). Google's own reports point the other way so far.
What it means for healthcare marketers: AI search adds to Google rather than replacing it. Patients move between a chatbot, an AI Overview and a classic results page, so plan content that works on all three.
How many patients use AI for health information
These surveys ask different questions (past year, monthly, "at least sometimes", "ever"), and the last two rows are company counts, so they are not a trend line. Quote each with its own wording.
| What was measured | Figure | Sample and date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Used AI for health information and advice in the past year | 32% of U.S. adults | 1,343 adults, February 24 to March 2, 2026 | KFF |
| Use AI tools or chatbots for health information and advice monthly | 29%, up from 17% two years earlier | 2,480 adults, May 2026 | KFF |
| Ever use AI chatbots for at least one of eight health reasons | 34% | 3,488 adults, June 2026 | Pew Research Center |
| Get health information from AI chatbots at least sometimes | 22% (85% for health care providers) | 5,111 adults, October 2025 | Pew Research Center |
| Have used AI to gather healthcare information or advice | 25% | 5,660 adults, late 2025 | West Health-Gallup |
| People who ask ChatGPT health questions each week | More than 300 million, globally | July 2026 | OpenAI |
| Health questions asked on Google Search | More than a billion every day, globally | March 2026 |
KFF notes that search engine users "may be getting AI-generated health information, even if they are not looking for it" (KFF). Gallup found that among recent AI health users, 61% used general chatbots such as ChatGPT or Copilot and 55% used AI built into web search, such as Google AI summaries (Gallup).
What it means: roughly a third of adults now bring health questions to AI, and Google's AI answers reach search users even when they are not asking. For the full patient picture, see how patients use AI to research providers.
How patients use AI to choose a provider
rater8's 2026 survey of 992 U.S. adults found 47% of patients have used an AI tool to research healthcare providers, up from 31% in 2025. Among patients who searched for a new doctor in the past year, 36% said AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude influenced their choice, ahead of Google search results (34%) and doctor referrals (32%), and 39% of those who switched providers said so (rater8).
In the same survey, 37% of patients picked the AI Overview as the part of Google's results they trust most when looking for care, versus 20% for organic links, 13% for the local map pack and 7% for sponsored ads. Among AI users, 66% had encountered incorrect provider information from an AI tool, and 60% trusted the summary they received without verifying it (rater8). rater8 sells reputation management software, and the answers are self-reported.
Not every survey agrees. In Wolters Kluwer's 2026 survey of 254 U.S. patients, only 30% said they would consider using AI to find a healthcare provider (Wolters Kluwer). The panels and questions differ ("would consider" versus "have used"), so present both.
Microsoft's analysis of more than 500,000 Copilot health conversations found that finding nearby providers, clinics or specialists was the top topic among healthcare navigation conversations, at 43.1% of that category (Microsoft AI).
What it means: the moment a patient asks AI "who should I see" is a booking moment, and wrong details in the answer can send that patient elsewhere. See what to do when AI gets your practice wrong.
How often AI answers appear on healthcare searches
Studies measure this on different keyword sets, so the rates differ widely.
| Study | AI Overview rate | What was measured | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conductor | 48.7% | Page-one Google queries in its health care set, drawn from about 21.9 million U.S. Google searches across all 10 industries it studied, September to October 2025 | Conductor |
| WebFX | 51% | 130,070 U.S. health-related queries, July 2025 | WebFX |
| Ahrefs | 44.1% | Medical "Your Money or Your Life" queries in 146 million desktop SERPs, September 2025 | Ahrefs |
| BrightEdge | 89% | Its tracked healthcare keyword set, December 2025 | BrightEdge |
| Pew Research Center | 18% | All Google searches by 900 U.S. adults, March 2025 | Pew |
BrightEdge follows a chosen set of healthcare keywords, while Pew counted every Google search its panel made, on any topic. The breakdown by query type and specialty is in AI Overviews statistics for healthcare searches.
What it means: WebFX found AI Overviews on 66.9% of informational health queries (WebFX), so many patients read an AI summary first. Ranking well still matters, but being one of the cited sources matters more.
Who AI answers cite in healthcare
In Conductor's data, mayoclinic.org (6.58%) and clevelandclinic.org (4.90%) earned the largest shares of AI citations in health care equipment and services, while pfizer.com held 16.40% in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and life sciences. Healthline.com held the largest share of voice in health care AI Overviews, at 5.76% (Conductor).
Local questions behave differently. Yext found that for healthcare, listings such as medical directories and insurance platforms accounted for 52.61% of all AI citations, the heaviest listing reliance of any industry it studied (Yext Research). Across more than 350,000 locations of 2,751 multi-location brands in all industries, SOCi found ChatGPT recommends just 1.2% of brand locations, compared with a 35.9% appearance rate in Google's local 3-Pack (SOCi).
Ranking in Google is not the same as being cited by AI. Across 15,000 prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity, only 12% of cited links ranked in Google's top 10 for the same prompt on average; Perplexity was highest at 28.6%, and the others hovered around 8% (Ahrefs). In healthcare, about 24% of AI Overview sources also rank in Google's top 10, the highest of nine industries BrightEdge tracked (BrightEdge).
What earns a citation? In the GEO study presented at KDD, adding citations, quotations and statistics to a page improved its visibility in AI-generated answers by 30% to 40% on the researchers' benchmark, and by up to 37% in a test on Perplexity (Aggarwal et al.). Across 75,000 brands, Ahrefs found YouTube mentions had the strongest correlation with AI visibility (about 0.737), a correlation rather than a cause (Ahrefs).
What it means: large health publishers set the bar for general questions, and directories shape local ones. A practice wins its own questions with specific, sourced pages and accurate listings. See where AI gets healthcare answers and AI citations in healthcare.
AI search traffic and clicks
| What was measured | Figure | Scope | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI referrals as a share of health care website traffic | 0.64% | Health care sites among 1,215 enterprise domains across all 10 industries, U.S., May to September 2025 | Conductor |
| ChatGPT's share of health care AI referral traffic | 83.8% | Same dataset | Conductor |
| Growth in ChatGPT outbound referral traffic | 206% in 2025 | U.S. clickstream, January 2025 vs January 2026 | Semrush |
| Change in the average site's search traffic vs AI traffic | Search down about 21%, AI up roughly 10 times | 81,947 sites, mid-2025 | Ahrefs |
| Google traffic vs ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot combined | 210 times more | Same dataset | Ahrefs |
| U.S. Google searches that ended without a click | 68.01% | January to April 2026, Similarweb panel | SparkToro |
| Clicks on a traditional result when an AI summary appeared | 8% of visits, vs 15% without one | 900 U.S. adults, all topics, March 2025 | Pew Research Center |
| Organic clicks per impression when cited in an AI Overview | 120% more than when not cited | 53 brands, January 2025 to February 2026 | Seer Interactive |
Across industries, AI referral traffic "currently represents just over 1% of total web visits", so health care sits below average (Conductor). To count these visits and their bookings, see AI search traffic to bookings and zero-click searches in healthcare.
What it means: judge AI search by whether you are named and cited, then by the bookings that follow. Clicks alone undercount it.
Do AI visitors convert better?
The studies point in different directions. Adobe found AI-referred visits to U.S. retail sites converted 90% better than non-AI traffic in September 2026 and generated 83% higher revenue per visit (Adobe). Semrush found the average AI search visitor is 4.4 times as valuable as an organic visitor, based on conversion rate (Semrush). On Ahrefs' own site, AI search visitors converted at a 23 times higher rate, a single-site result (Ahrefs).
Other studies see little or no gap. Across 54 websites, Amsive found LLM referrals converted at 4.87% and organic search at 4.60%, a difference its test did not find significant (Amsive). Across about 82,000 sites, Ahrefs found AI visitors were 4.1% more likely to bounce than search visitors (Ahrefs).
What it means: none of these is a healthcare study. Measure your own AI visitors through to booked appointments before you plan around a multiplier.
How accurate AI health answers are
In a randomized study of 1,298 people published in Nature Medicine, participants using GPT-4o, Llama 3 or Command R+ identified the relevant condition in fewer than 34.5% of cases, no better than a control group, even though the models alone identified conditions in 94.9% of cases (Bean et al.). Stanford researchers found that "between 50% and 90% of LLM responses are not fully supported, and sometimes contradicted, by the sources they cite" (Wu et al., Nature Communications).
A 2026 preprint graded Google's AI Overviews for 3,611 benchmark health questions against physician-written rubrics; they earned 38.2% of available points. It is not yet peer reviewed, and a model did the grading (Agnoli et al.).
Patients sense the gap. Only 4% of recent AI health users strongly trust the accuracy of AI health information (Gallup), and 44% of U.S. adults are not too or not at all confident they can tell whether health information from AI chatbots is true or false (KFF). Yet 43% of patients told rater8 they trust AI more than a year ago, and 20% trust it less (rater8).
What it means: clear, clinician-reviewed pages with named sources give AI something reliable to quote, and give the patient who clicks through a reason to trust you.
How to use these statistics
- Quote the source and its wording. Keep qualifiers such as "of patients surveyed". Survey and clickstream numbers are not interchangeable.
- Show both sides when studies disagree. Name each method.
- Build your own baseline. The figure that matters most is how often AI answers name your brand for your patients' questions, and what those answers send you.
How Curve Compliance helps
AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. In Curve, the feature is called AI Visibility (AEO), and the managed service is Curve AEO. Introducing Curve AEO: a service that helps you understand how your brand appears in AI search, with a team that handles the strategy and execution for you.
What You Get with Curve AEO:
- AI Visibility Tracking. See how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers.
- Optimize Your Site for AI. We make technical improvements that help AI assistants find, read, and understand your content.
- Competitive Insights. Understand who's getting recommended instead of you.
- Content Roadmap. Identify gaps and prioritize opportunities to improve performance.
With the managed service, Curve's team sets up your questions, competitors and topics, writes the pages on your roadmap, and makes the technical fixes that help AI assistants read your site. Your clinicians review and approve anything medical before it goes live. If your developer manages your site, Curve's team hands them the exact fixes. Curve's team turns those insights into action: building your strategy, creating and optimizing content, and tracking progress.
It ties AI answers to the visits and bookings they bring you. It's built for healthcare: only the marketing question you track is sent to AI assistants, screened for PHI first, and never anything about a patient. Curve is SOC 2 Type II and signs a BAA on every plan.
In one AI Visibility program we've run, for a HIPAA-focused healthcare software brand, AI assistants named or cited the brand in more than half of their answers to its 40 core buyer questions about five weeks in. Across 184 buyer questions, its site was cited in more AI answers than any competitor's, more than 2.5 times as many as the nearest one.
Built for healthcare marketers, Curve connects the entire patient funnel in one platform: paid ads, web analytics, and now AI search. AI Visibility is available on request: book a call to get started.
Sources (checked November 6, 2026): OpenAI, expanding access to AI (August 31, 2026); OpenAI, next phase of AI (March 31, 2026); OpenAI and David Deming, How People Use ChatGPT, NBER (September 2025); OpenAI, Health in ChatGPT (July 2026); Pew, ChatGPT use (June 2025); Google, Q3 2026 remarks; Google, I/O 2026 keynote; Google, AI Search at I/O 2026; Google, The Check Up (March 2026); Perplexity, Enterprise Pro (April 23, 2024); Gartner (February 19, 2024); KFF Monitor (March 26, 2026); KFF, AI for health information (March 25, 2026); KFF, social media and AI (June 17, 2026); Pew, AI chatbots for health (August 2026); Pew, health information sources (April 2026); West Health-Gallup (April 14, 2026); rater8, 2026 Patient Choice Report; Wolters Kluwer Health (2026); Microsoft AI, Copilot for Health (March 2026); Conductor, Health Care 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks; BrightEdge, healthcare AI Overviews (December 2025); BrightEdge, AI Overviews at one year (February 2026); WebFX (September 2025); Ahrefs, AI Overview triggers (November 2025); Pew, AI summaries and clicks (July 2025); Yext Research (October 2025); SOCi, 2026 Local Visibility Index; Ahrefs, AI and Google overlap (August 2025); Ahrefs, brand visibility factors (December 2025); Aggarwal et al., GEO, KDD 2024; Semrush, ChatGPT traffic analysis (April 2026); Ahrefs, AI traffic growth (June 2025); SparkToro, zero-click 2026 (June 9, 2026); Seer Interactive, CTR 2026 update; Adobe (October 29, 2026); Semrush, AI search traffic study (July 2025); Ahrefs, AI search conversions (June 2025); Amsive, LLM conversion study (September 2025); Ahrefs, AI traffic quality (June 2025); Bean et al., Nature Medicine (February 2026); Wu et al., Nature Communications (April 2025); Agnoli et al., arXiv preprint (October 2026).
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the most important AI search statistics for healthcare marketers?
The figures that matter most cover reach, patient use and clicks: Google says AI Overviews has over 2.5 billion monthly active users (Google), KFF found 32% of U.S. adults used AI for health information in the past year (KFF), and AI referrals were 0.64% of health care website traffic in Conductor's data (Conductor).
Is AI search replacing Google?
Not so far. Google says its year-over-year query growth rate in Q3 2026 was the highest in five years (Google), and in U.S. clickstream data, Semrush found Google receives 21.6% of all the referral traffic ChatGPT sends out, which Semrush says could be people confirming what they found (Semrush).
How often do AI Overviews appear on health searches?
It depends on the keyword set: 48.7% of page-one health care queries in Conductor's data (Conductor), 51% of 130,070 health queries for WebFX (WebFX) and 89% of BrightEdge's tracked healthcare keywords (BrightEdge). See AI Overviews statistics for the breakdown.
How much healthcare website traffic comes from AI assistants?
In Conductor's 2026 benchmarks, AI referrals were 0.64% of all website traffic in health care, and ChatGPT drove 83.8% of that AI traffic (Conductor). AI answers also influence patients who never click, so traffic is only part of the picture.
Do patients trust AI health answers?
Trust is mixed: only 4% of recent AI health users strongly trust the accuracy of AI health information (Gallup), yet 60% of patients who used AI to research providers trusted the summary without verifying it (rater8).
Why do AI search statistics disagree so much?
Studies use different samples (survey panels, clickstream panels, tracked keyword sets), different time frames and different definitions of "use". Compare figures only when the method matches, and quote each one with its own source.
How can I see how often AI answers mention my brand?
Ask the questions your patients ask and record which brands and sites each answer names. Curve AEO does this for you: it shows how often AI-generated answers name your brand, who is recommended instead, and what to improve, with a team that does the work.
Talk to Curve Compliance
Want to see how your brand shows up in the AI answers your patients read? Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.