# How many customers use AI to find a local business? The 2026 numbers By [Patrick Colton](/about/#patrick). Published October 17, 2026. About half. In two surveys published in 2026, 52% and 47% of US consumers said they had used an AI tool to find a local business in the past month. A year earlier, SOCi measured 9%. And the tools are big. Google says AI Overviews has over 2.5 billion monthly users, and OpenAI says ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people each week. Owners ask us whether this is real or a sales pitch. So we collected the numbers. Every figure below links to the publisher's own page and gives the date and how it was measured. Where a company is counting its own users, we say so. ## How many people use AI to find a local business? - **52% in the last 30 days.** [SOCi's 2026 Local Discovery Index](https://www.soci.ai/blog/ai-local-search-verification-loop/), a weighted survey of more than 1,000 US consumers published in September 2026, found that 52% had used an AI tool to find a local business in the last 30 days. SOCi's 2025 edition put it at 9%. - **47% in the past month.** [Yext surveyed 1,120 US adults](https://www.yext.com/resources/consumer-search-behaviors-findings) in March 2026. 47% had used an AI tool to find a local business in the past month. Among people who search daily, it was 59%. - **45% in the past year.** [BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/lcrs-ai-trust/), published in March 2026, found that 45% of 1,002 US adults had used an AI tool for local business recommendations in the past 12 months, up from 6% in 2025. - **42% have used chatbots to search.** [Pew Research Center](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/) surveyed 5,119 US adults in February 2026. About four in ten said they ever use AI chatbots to search for information. Pew names searching for information and work tasks as the most common uses. SOCi, Yext and BrightLocal sell local marketing software, so read their figures as industry surveys. They were run separately, with different questions and time frames, and they land close together. Pew sells nothing and asked a broader question. ## How big are the AI tools customers ask? These are the companies' own counts, not independent measurements. - **ChatGPT: 1.2 billion people a week.** [OpenAI, October 2026](https://openai.com/index/new-chatgpt-ads-format-and-measurement/). - **Google AI Overviews: over 2.5 billion monthly users.** [Sundar Pichai at Google I/O, May 2026](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/sundar-pichai-io-2026/). - **Google AI Mode: over one billion monthly users** one year after its debut, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch. [Google, May 2026](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/). - **Clicks to websites.** On [Alphabet's earnings call in July 2026](https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q2-2026/), Pichai said Google is "now sending billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search." Google gave no exact number. ## Do people act on what an AI recommends? - **28% tried a new local business because of an AI recommendation.** [Yext's 2026 survey](https://www.yext.com/resources/consumer-search-behaviors-full-report) of 3,848 adults worldwide who search for local businesses found that 28% of the people surveyed had tried a new local business in the past six months specifically because an AI recommended it. Yext calls its findings directional. - **The recommended brand got the visit.** [Similarweb](https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/after-ai-recommends-your-brand/) followed its US desktop panel from July to December 2025. It looked at people who had not named a brand in their prompt or visited its site in the four weeks before. Within seven days, they visited the brand ChatGPT recommended more often than its rival in all six cases tested, with no direct link. When ChatGPT recommended Capital One, 14.2% visited Capital One and 3.8% visited American Express. - **AI visitors bought more often.** [Adobe found](https://business.adobe.com/blog/2026-prime-day-insights) that AI traffic to US retail sites, counted as shoppers clicking a link from AI chat services and browsers, rose 235% year over year from January to May 2026. During Prime Day 2026 those visitors converted 40% better than visitors from channels like paid search, email and social media. A year earlier they converted 23% worse. Adobe adds that AI traffic is still modest next to other channels. - **AI is part of more shopping trips.** Similarweb reports that the share of US desktop shopper journeys that include AI before a transactional site grew from 4.5% to 11.4% between July 2024 and June 2026. The last three are about retail and national brands, not local service businesses. They still show people acting on what an AI names. ## Do customers check before they call? Most do. [SOCi found](https://www.soci.ai/blog/ai-local-search-verification-loop/) that when an AI recommends a business, 81% of consumers take some kind of verification step before contacting it: checking reviews (33%), checking the business's social media (20%), searching to confirm details (16%) or checking multiple sources (12%). Only 19% go straight from the AI's answer to contacting the business. ## What this means for a local business An AI answer is a short list, and the customer checks it. What they check is what the AI read: your website, your Google Business Profile, your listings and your reviews. When those agree, an engine has one clear set of facts to repeat and the customer finds the same facts when they look. When they disagree, the engine has less to go on and the customer has a reason to doubt. None of these numbers means an AI will name a particular business. Google says meeting its requirements does not guarantee that a page will be crawled, indexed or shown. The [GEO Audit](/geo-audit/) records which businesses the AIs name for your service in your town today, and what they can read about yours. $500, credited in full toward any package bought within 30 days. **Sources.** SOCi, "AI Usage Surges 6X for Local Search, Fragmenting the Digital Ecosystem," 2026 Local Discovery Index, September 24, 2026, [soci.ai/blog/ai-local-search-verification-loop](https://www.soci.ai/blog/ai-local-search-verification-loop/). Yext, "Consumer Search Behaviors Report 2026," US findings, [yext.com/resources/consumer-search-behaviors-findings](https://www.yext.com/resources/consumer-search-behaviors-findings), and the full report, [yext.com/resources/consumer-search-behaviors-full-report](https://www.yext.com/resources/consumer-search-behaviors-full-report). BrightLocal, "Nearly Half of Consumers are Asking AI for Business Recommendations," March 10, 2026, [brightlocal.com/research/lcrs-ai-trust](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/lcrs-ai-trust/). Pew Research Center, "Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact," June 17, 2026, [pewresearch.org](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/). OpenAI, "Building advertising for the way people use AI," October 5, 2026, [openai.com/index/new-chatgpt-ads-format-and-measurement](https://openai.com/index/new-chatgpt-ads-format-and-measurement/). Google, "I/O 2026: Welcome to the agentic Gemini era," Sundar Pichai, May 19, 2026, [blog.google](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/sundar-pichai-io-2026/). Google, "A new era for AI Search," Elizabeth Reid, May 19, 2026, [blog.google](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/). Alphabet, "Q2 2026 earnings call: Remarks from our CEO," July 22, 2026, [blog.google](https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q2-2026/). Similarweb, "What Happens After AI Recommends Your Brand?" October 14, 2026, [aisearch.similarweb.com](https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/after-ai-recommends-your-brand/). Adobe Digital Insights, Prime Day 2026 report, "Summer is the new holiday season," Vivek Pandya, June 29, 2026, [business.adobe.com/blog/2026-prime-day-insights](https://business.adobe.com/blog/2026-prime-day-insights). Google, "Google Search Essentials," [developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials).