Everyone has an opinion about whether AI is replacing Google. Almost nobody quotes a number that came from a real survey. Here is the age data, where it comes from, and the part that actually changes what you should do.
All of it is from the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank with nothing to sell, which surveyed 5,119 US adults in February 2026 and publishes its question wording and per-age tables. The teenage figures come from a separate Pew survey of 1,458 teens.
Who has used an AI chatbot
- 64%13 to 17
- 66%18 to 29
- 61%30 to 49
- 42%50 to 64
- 23%65 and older
- 13 to 17
- 64%
- 18 to 29
- 66%
- 30 to 49
- 61%
- 50 to 64
- 42%
- 65 and older
- 23%
Half of all US adults now say they have used one, up from about a third in 2024.
Look at where the cliff is. It is not between young and old. It is between 49 and 50. Under 50, roughly six in ten have used AI. Over 65, it is two in ten.
Who uses it to search
Searching for information is the single most common thing Americans do with a chatbot. This is the chart that matters for a practice.
- 57%13 to 17
- 54%18 to 29
- 53%30 to 49
- 37%50 to 64
- 20%65 and older
- 13 to 17
- 57%
- 18 to 29
- 54%
- 30 to 49
- 53%
- 50 to 64
- 37%
- 65 and older
- 20%
Note the shape. It is nearly flat from 13 to 49, then drops. Teenagers and forty-somethings use AI to look things up at almost the same rate.
If your clients are parents of young children, or anyone under 50, half of them have searched this way.
And this one is bigger than both
Most people are not opening ChatGPT. They are reading the AI answer Google puts at the top of its own results page, often without noticing it is AI at all.
- 72%18 to 29
- 68%30 to 49
- 59%50 to 64
- 38%65 and older
- 18 to 29
- 72%
- 30 to 49
- 68%
- 50 to 64
- 59%
- 65 and older
- 38%
Sixty percent of US adults say they read those summaries. That is a bigger number than chatbot use in every single age group, and it happens on Google, not on a chatbot.
Daily use does not peak where you think
34%of 30 to 49 year olds use a chatbot daily or more, essentially level with the 31% of under-30s. It falls to 19% for 50 to 64 and 7% for 65 and older.
Pew notes that not every difference shown is statistically significant, so read that as "the two youngest brackets are level" rather than "the forties have overtaken the twenties." Either way, this is not a teenager habit. It is a working-age habit.
Now the part everyone gets wrong
Google is not losing.
Across 41 of the biggest search destinations, Google handled 73.7% of all US desktop searches in the last quarter of 2025. The entire AI category was 3.2%. Amazon, Bing and YouTube each carried more search activity than ChatGPT.
Comscore's panel has US desktop search volume going up, not down: 76 billion searches in the first quarter of 2026, 10% more than the same quarter two years earlier.
And roughly half the people who visit ChatGPT in a month never type a prompt at all, against more than 70% of people who visit Google and actually search. Visit counts flatter it by about double.
What actually changed is the click
This is the real story, and it has nothing to do with which tool people open.
Pew tracked what 900 US adults genuinely did in their browsers. On a Google results page carrying an AI summary, people clicked through to a website on 8% of visits. On a page with no summary, 15%. Nearly double.
They ended the session entirely on 26% of pages with a summary, against 16% without.
So the searches are still happening, in roughly the same place, at roughly the same volume. Fewer of them turn into a visit.
What that means for your practice
Three things follow, and none of them are "panic."
Your Google Business Profile matters more, not less. When somebody asks an assistant for a practice near them, the answer is assembled from the same local data Google already holds about you. In one analysis of where AI answers pull local business citations from, google.com accounted for 59.2% of citations in the veterinary category and 57% in dental, with Yelp second at about 19.5% and 15.4%.
Your website still has to be the thing that closes. Fewer clicks means the ones you get are worth more. Somebody who reads an AI summary and then clicks through to you has already narrowed it down.
Being readable to an assistant is now table stakes. If a site is thin on plain answers to the questions people ask out loud, there is nothing for an assistant to quote.
What to do this week
- Complete every field on your Google Business Profile. It is the single largest input into both map pack ranking and what an assistant tells someone about you.
- Open your own site on a phone and find your hours, your address and your phone number in under five seconds.
- Write plain answers to the five questions clients ask on the phone, one per page. That is what gets quoted.
- Check your Yelp listing is accurate. It is the second most cited source in both categories and most practice owners have not looked at it in years.
None of this is new advice. That is rather the point. The channel shifted and the work did not.