B Evidence Grade B Graded under review Safe to Cite Current

8% -- click through rate to traditional links for AI search users (2026)

Name: Click Through Rate To Traditional Links Statistics
Creator: Lighthouse Intelligence
Published: 2026-10-01

2026 · Pew Research

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Attribution: Pew Research View source

Lighthouse Research Team

Last verified: 2026-10-01 · How we verify data →

Source verified Evidence graded

Value

Unit

Percentage

Data Vintage

2026

Entity

AI search users

Geography

Global

Evidence Quality

Strong, reliable evidence

Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.

60/100 confidence

Single source - not yet corroborated

Score breakdown

Extraction

Source Trust

Citation Chain

Independence

Methodology

Freshness

Source

Pew Research Primary Tier B

https://digitalstrategyforce.com/journal/how-do-ai-search-engines-decide-which-sources-to-show-first… ↗

Confidence: 53/100 Vintage: 2026 Channel: Deep Crawl

Source Article

How Do AI Search Engines Decide Which Sources to Show First? | Digital Strategy Force

How Do AI Search Engines Decide Which Sources to Show First? Out of thousands of pages that could answer a query, an AI search engine cites just one or two. It scores every candidate through a two-stage pipeline weighing relevance, authority, freshness, and extraction confidence. The cited source ta…

Original Research

Pew Research · Original study ↗

Methodology

Pew Research study cited by Digital Strategy Force; 15% when no summary present

Methodology documented

Segmentation

IndustryMedia RegionGlobal RoleAll marketers Channelsearch

Cite this stat

Plain Text

AI search users: 8% click through rate to traditional links. Source: Pew Research (2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/click-through-traditional-link-with-ai-summary

HTML Embed

<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/click-through-traditional-link-with-ai-summary" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>8%</strong> -- click through rate to traditional links for AI search users<br><small>Source: Pew Research (2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/click-through-traditional-link-with-ai-summary" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>

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