How many buyers use AI to research products? The numbers and what they mean for your company

How many buyers start product research in an AI assistant?

Depending on the survey, from about a quarter to about two fifths of AI users.

Snipp's 2026 survey of 1,000 US adults who regularly use AI for search and shopping found that 41.6% typically start a product search in an AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. Semrush asked 1,030 US consumers with AI experience where they begin, and 26% named AI while 33% named search engines, so AI already sits seven points behind search as a place to begin.

The growth is the striking part. Visa Acceptance Solutions' 2026 Global Digital Shopping Index found that 30% of shoppers used ChatGPT while researching their latest purchase, up from 2% two years earlier. Visa Acceptance Solutions also found that 47% used AI somewhere in their latest purchase journey.

Do buyers trust what AI tells them about a company?

They use it to build the shortlist, and then they check it. ProductAI found in its 2026 Trust in AI Commerce Report that 86% of shoppers who used AI for product research verified the AI recommendation elsewhere before buying. Semrush found that 77% of its respondents use AI and search together.

This is good news for companies that prepare. The buyer reads what the assistant says, then looks at your site, reviews and other sources. Keeping your description clear and consistent across all of them gives that check the same facts everywhere it looks.

Why do fewer buyers reach your website first?

Because the answer page now does the work your homepage used to do. SparkToro, using Similarweb data on how people browse, found that 68.01% of US Google searches in the first four months of 2026 ended without a click, up from 60.45% in 2024.

AI summaries take this further. Researchers publishing on arXiv studied one month of browsing data from 900 US adults and found that 1% of visits to pages with an AI Overview, the AI summary Google shows above the results, ended in a click on a cited source. Almost every visit ended without that click, so knowing exactly what the summary says about your company is worth the effort.

Do buyers discover new brands through AI?

They do. Snipp found that 83.6% of regular AI users have used AI to discover a brand or product they had not heard of before.

Snipp's figure shows that AI assistants introduce buyers to brands they did not know before. For any company that wants new buyers, that makes AI answers worth measuring, and EntityRise shows you where you already appear in them.

What should a company measure in AI answers?

Measure the kind of questions buyers ask about your category, including questions that leave your brand name out, such as a request for the right tool for a job, a shortlist of providers or a comparison. In those answers the assistant decides who appears, which is why 17 of the 20 questions in an EntityRise audit leave your brand name out.

EntityRise scores five things in its AI Visibility Index:

1. Mention: whether the assistant names you at all (20% of the score).
2. Recommendation: whether it suggests you as a fit for the buyer's need (30%).
3. Prominence: where you appear in the answer and how much space you get (20%).
4. Citation support: whether the assistant points to sources that back the claims about you (15%).
5. Description accuracy: whether what it says about your product, market and offer is correct (15%).

Recommendation carries the most weight in the index, at 30% of the score.

How do you check how AI assistants describe your company?

Start with evidence from the assistants your buyers use, then fix what the evidence shows.

1. Write down the questions a buyer asks before they know your name, such as which provider fits a specific job in your market.
2. Add a few questions that do include your brand, to see how assistants describe your product, pricing and fit.
3. Ask every question in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity, so you see each assistant your buyers may use.
4. Record who gets named, who gets recommended and which sources each answer cites.
5. Compare your results with your main competitors on the same questions.
6. Fix the gaps in order: technical access for the bots AI companies use to read websites, clear content that answers buyer questions, then authority from trusted outside sources.

EntityRise runs this process for you. Its $49 AI Visibility Audit puts 20 buyer questions, 17 of them without your brand name, to five AI providers, with up to 100 observations in total. You approve the business profile, buyer topics and question set before the measurement starts. The report covers seven sections in about 40 pages and compares you with your competitors on six dimensions. When you want the fixes done for you, the Expert Audit adds human verification for $499, and the six week Implementation Sprint handles the technical, content and authority work for $5,000.