AI tools grew 79 percent in a year, and Google search is still more than seven times bigger. That is the headline number in Semrush’s State of Search Q3 2026 report: AI assistants reached 1.29 percent of all U.S. desktop web activity in September, up from 0.72 percent a year earlier. Traditional search engines held between 9.47 and 10.02 percent all quarter.
The more useful finding sits underneath. After a rough summer, the share of U.S. Google searches that ended in a click to an outside website climbed from a low of 39.74 percent in July to a new high of 46.11 percent in September. Semrush sells the clickstream data behind the report, and the study covers desktop activity only, so mobile, where zero-click rates already run higher, is not in these numbers.
If you have been told to move your budget out of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and into “AI visibility,” look at your own Google Search Console clicks for July through September before you do anything. In my SEO work, the traffic is still coming from Google for nearly every client I look at, and this report says that is not a coincidence.
What the Report Measured
Semrush analyzed desktop browsing in the United States and 32 European countries, including the U.K., from July 2025 through September 2026. It tracked visits to search engines, AI assistants, e-commerce sites and social platforms. Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SparkToro, adds commentary throughout. The report does not disclose the size of its panel.
Europe followed the same pattern. AI tools peaked at 1.45 percent of desktop activity in August, and traditional search reached 10.28 percent in July. Fishkin points out that the two regions are now nearly even in AI adoption, after several years in which Europe ran well ahead.
Google Turned the Clicks Back On
The summer numbers were the scary part. In July, fewer than 40 percent of U.S. desktop Google searches sent anyone to the open web. Clicks to Google’s own properties, such as Maps, hotels and weather, peaked at 17.84 percent in August. Zero-click searches, where the searcher leaves without clicking anything, hit 24.97 percent in July.
By September all three had reversed. Zero-click searches fell to 22.99 percent, their lowest level since March. Clicks to Google-owned properties dropped to 14.19 percent. Organic clicks set a new high. Europe showed the same recovery, with organic clicks reaching 49.56 percent.
“It shows the search giant can take away traffic whenever it wants without risking market share or usage,” said Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SparkToro.
That is the real lesson of Q3. The open web did not win back those clicks.
Google gave them back.
Fishkin’s guess is that Google either eased off or that searchers learned to dig past the AI answers to find the links. Either way, publishers do not control the dial.
People Are Typing Longer Questions Into Google
Two other numbers point the same direction. Google searches per U.S. desktop searcher jumped to 123.36 in July, well above the previous range of about 95 to 103. And queries longer than 15 words rose to 2.58 percent of U.S. searches in September, beating the previous peak of 1.82 percent. In Europe, 15-plus-word queries quadrupled from a year earlier.
Fishkin reads the long queries as people treating Google like an AI assistant. I agree. Searchers have figured out that Google answers a full question now, so they ask one. That favors pages that answer specific, detailed questions over pages built around two-word keywords.
Google AI Mode is still small. It reached 0.31 percent of U.S. desktop activity in September, about 2.5 times its level at the end of June. It remains opt-in, and Fishkin notes that Google could change that trajectory overnight by making it the default on some searches.
Where AI Fits
ChatGPT reached 38.56 percent of U.S. desktop users in September, its highest share yet. Gemini held near 19 percent and Claude near 12 percent. In Europe, Claude kept growing and reached 13.72 percent. ChatGPT also climbed to the seventh most visited destination after a traditional search, which means people search Google to find their way to ChatGPT.
None of that means AI search can be ignored. When AI tools do send someone onward, the destinations are Google, YouTube, Microsoft and GitHub, and how those engines describe your brand matters. I wrote this week about why watching what AI says about your brand only helps if someone acts on it. But the traffic math in this report is plain. For most businesses, AI assistants are a growing second channel, not a replacement for Google.
Reading the Data Carefully
This is behavioral data, which makes it more useful than a survey. Early last year, an adMarketplace survey had Americans “ditching” Google for other ways to find products. Since then, Semrush’s panel shows Google’s share of U.S. desktop search at 92.43 percent in September.
The caveats still apply. The data is desktop only. Semrush does not say how many users are in its panel. And the vendor that publishes the report also sells the data. Third-party search data has had a hard year as well. Google started feeding some scrapers and rank trackers swapped search results this fall. Clickstream panels measure what people do in a browser, not what a scraper sees, so they are less exposed to that problem, but no single source should settle a strategy.
What To Do Next
- Pull your Google Search Console clicks and click-through rate for July through September, and compare them with this report.
- Build pages that answer long, specific questions, because that is how more people are searching Google now.
- Track how often AI tools mention and cite you, but budget for it as a second channel.
- Watch Google AI Mode. If Google makes it a default, the click numbers in the next report will look very different.
The AI crowd has been predicting the end of Google search for three years. The Q3 data shows something less dramatic and more useful to plan around. Google still sends most of the traffic, it can change how much it sends whenever it likes, and your job is to be the page worth clicking when it does.