B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
37%
37% -- share of consumers starting searches with ai tools for Global consumers (2026)
Roughly 37% of consumers begin their searches with an AI tool rather than a traditional search engine.
Attribution:
View source
Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
·
How we verify data →
Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
37%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2026
Entity
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
50
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
Unspecified (cited by Sitebard)
Primary
Tier C
https://www.sitebard.com/ai-statistics/ ↗
Source Article
AI Statistics 2026: Market, Usage, Jobs & Trends
Artificial intelligence moved from buzzword to business infrastructure faster than almost any technology in history. In 2026, AI sits at the center of corporate spending, daily consumer habits, and the future of work — with global corporate AI investment reaching record levels and the vast majority …
Original Research
Unspecified (cited by Sitebard)
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Aggregator citing unspecified research; no original methodology stated
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
Cite this stat
Plain Text
Global consumers: 37% share of consumers starting searches with ai tools. Source: Unspecified (cited by Sitebard) (2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/consumers-ai-first-search-2026
HTML Embed
<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/consumers-ai-first-search-2026" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>37%</strong> -- share of consumers starting searches with ai tools for Global consumers<br><small>Source: Unspecified (cited by Sitebard) (2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/consumers-ai-first-search-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
Share
Use this data in your work
Copy the citation, embed the widget, or explore thousands more verified marketing statistics -- all free.