In our October 2025 report, we found that 37% of marketing teams are actively optimizing their website or content for AI search.
Three years ago, ChatGPT changed how we interact with AI. People were thrilled to see how easily the AI chatbot could answer a question or explain a topic—for example, what’s the difference between using a VM or a container in the cloud? Naturally, people expanded their questions to ask for recommendations. What’s the best software for VMs and containers? Who are the best cloud providers? What are the most affordable instances?
Marketing professionals started to catch on that if their brands weren’t showing up in ChatGPT answers, they were not only missing opportunities, but also losing ground in brand reputation. Even worse, if ChatGPT gave an inaccurate answer, potential customers might walk away with bad information about a brand or product.
We surveyed consumers and marketing professionals about emerging trends in AEO
To better understand how people are using AI search tools and how marketers are adjusting their search engine optimization (SEO) strategies in response, On Marketing conducted two surveys.
First, we ran a consumer survey, asking 250 people in the United States between the ages of 18-85 about whether and how they use AI chatbots and Google AI Overviews. We collected survey responses in early September 2025 through the Prolific market research platform.
For our professional survey, we asked 250 marketing professionals based in the United States about how their teams are adopting strategies to optimize content for AI search engines and chatbots, like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. This is known as answer engine optimization (AEO), or sometimes AI SEO, generative engine optimization (GEO), or LLM optimization (LLMO). Since we needed to locate qualified professionals, this survey took a bit longer, and responses were collected throughout September 2025, once again through Prolific.
You can explore our full Trends in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) 2025 Report, but we’ve summarized the key findings below. Feel free to reference our findings in your own content with a backlink or attribution (e.g., “On Marketing, Trends in AEO 2025 Report, October 2025”). After all, AI search engines love fresh statistics.
95% of people use ChatGPT or another AI chatbot at least monthly
The results of our consumer survey were surprising, even to us. A total of 94.8% of our survey respondents said they used an AI chatbot (ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini, or similar) at least once in the last 30 days. More than a third, or 38%, used ChatGPT or another chatbot daily.
It’s a good time to mention that this survey was offered online, so our respondents are clearly comfortable with internet-based tools. If we had conducted a man-on-the-street survey, it’s probably safe to assume that fewer people would have reported using an AI chatbot. (With the holidays coming up, we encourage you to conduct your own survey over Thanksgiving or your get-together of choice.) Still, the percentage was higher than we expected, and it underscores the need for marketers to pay attention to what chatbots are saying.
86% of people replaced a Google search with a question to a chatbot at least once
Next, we wanted to know about how people were using ChatGPT and other AI chatbots as answer engines. After all, people have all kinds of reasons for talking to ChatGPT, and we wanted to focus on those who were looking for information. Specifically, we wanted to know whether they were ever using chatbots instead of Google to get answers to their questions.
By the way, these chatbot-provided answers are known as “zero-click” searches, because you don’t have to follow any links to get an answer.
Here, we found another surprise: 86% of our survey respondents said they had replaced a Google search with a question to an AI chatbot at least once in the previous 30 days.
At this point, we needed more information, because our results were starting to make us worry that Google searches were dead. (Spoiler alert: they’re not.) Only 4% of respondents claimed they had completely replaced Google searches, while another 14% said they asked an AI chatbot over Google “most of the time.”
Now we were getting a better idea of the situation, and it’s not far from what we had imagined: search is generally happening in a hybrid environment in which users find information through a combination of Google searches and chatbot responses. It’s not one or the other: it’s both.
90% of people read Google AI Overviews
Until now, we’ve only focused on AI chatbots. But there’s another AI feature that’s quickly becoming a big part of the search experience. Google AI Overviews are Gemini-generated summaries that sometimes appear at the top of Google search results. AI Overviews give users a complete answer to a query, along with links to sources.
Smart of Google to realize that a hybrid experience fits what most users are looking for. Google AI Overviews give the best of both worlds with a zero-click answer and the option to follow links.
In our survey, 90.4% of respondents said they at least sometimes read the Google AI Overview when it’s provided as part of their search results. More than half (54%) read them “most of the time” and 13.6% always read them. Only 6.8% said they receive AI Overviews but ignore them. About 2% of respondents don’t see AI Overviews in their Google search results, while 0.4% don’t know what AI Overviews are.
97% of people keep scrolling past Google AI Overviews to see top search results
Remember how we said traditional Google searches aren’t dead? This next result proves it. We asked our survey participants what happened after they read a Google AI Overview, and 96.8% said they continued to scroll down to see the top search results at least sometimes. More than a quarter (28.4%) said they always scrolled down, and 42.8% said they scrolled down “most of the time.” Only 3.2% said they never read past the AI Overview.
This should give us confidence that, at least for now, the search engine results page (SERP) ranking many of us in digital marketing have worked so hard to optimize for still matters.
59% of people have used ChatGPT or another AI chatbot to research a purchase
To close out our consumer survey, we asked what (to a marketer, at least) was the most important question of all: have you used ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini, or another AI chatbot to research a purchase?
According to our survey, 59% of people have used an AI chatbot to research a purchase. Breaking this down by type of purchase, 57.6% have used an AI chatbot to research a consumer purchase (for themselves personally or their household) and 12.4% have used an AI chatbot to research a business purchase. About 11% have used it for both consumer and business purchases.
The big takeaway for marketing teams is that making sure your brand is visible in AI answer engines is critical, whether you’re in consumer or B2B marketing.
37% of marketing teams have adopted strategies to optimize for AI search visibility
It’s clear that ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and other large language model (LLM)-based search tools are playing a major role in how people are making purchase decisions for both consumer and business products. So, what are marketing teams doing about it?
According to our survey of marketing professionals, 37.2% of marketing teams are actively optimizing their website or content to improve AI search visibility. Another 30.8% have not yet implemented AI search optimization strategies, but are exploring them.
Interestingly, 16.8% of respondents said they have optimized for SEO and assume that will help with AI search. While this is partially true in that AEO incorporates a lot of traditional SEO, optimizing for LLMs goes beyond targeting the best keywords. For example, a good AEO strategy will include the creation of an llms.txt file and schema markup.
Finally, 10% of marketing teams don’t have any plans to optimize for AI search, and 5.2% are not familiar with AI search optimization.
77% of marketing teams are monitoring brand or content visibility in ChatGPT
The next survey result is pretty interesting, because it indicates that even when marketing teams aren’t optimizing for AI search, they still care about monitoring their brand visibility in AI platforms. Auditing brand visibility on LLMs can be as simple as manually typing questions into ChatGPT to see how it responds, but we recommend using tools like Semrush or Rankscale to automate the job and collect regular data over time.
ChatGPT is by far the most popular AI platform that marketing professionals watch, with 76.4% of marketing teams monitoring brand visibility in ChatGPT. The next most popular platforms being monitored are Google AI Overviews (35.6%), Microsoft Copilot (27.2%), and Google AI Mode (24.4%).
Fewer marketing teams are monitoring xAI Grok (13.6%) and Perplexity (12%). A minority (6.8%) are monitoring other AI platforms not listed. One in 10 respondents say they are not monitoring their brand or content in any AI platform.
80% of marketing teams will have implemented AEO strategies within the next year
Although most marketing teams have not yet implemented AI search optimization strategies, they understand its potential and are making plans to incorporate AEO into their marketing activities soon. And the sooner, the better: winning a preferred search query early can give you an advantage over competitive products and brands.
In our survey, about a third of respondents said their AI search optimization strategies are already in progress. More than a quarter (26.8%) said they will start implementing their strategies within the next six months, and about another quarter (23.2%) plan to implement within the next 12 months. Altogether, 80% of marketing teams plan to have AI search optimization strategies in play within a year. A few believe they will take as long as 18 months (4.8%), while 15.2% have no plans to optimize for AI search at all.
52% of marketing teams are optimizing website content for search
Even if they have not fully rolled out AEO strategies, the majority of marketers we surveyed are already practicing some activities that are part of an AI search optimization program. This is good news, since it means incorporating AEO will most likely mean adding to what’s already there instead of building up an entirely new practice area.
More than half of marketing teams (52.4%) are optimizing their websites for
search, an activity that can be expanded to LLM optimization by using structured data or schema markup. Nearly half (48%) are mapping keywords and topics—a traditional SEO activity that plays a large role in AI search.
Many marketing teams (42%) are monitoring AI search visibility (by tracking query rankings or using brand visibility dashboards) and 29.6% are producing thought leadership content (such as blog articles, reports, and
guides). Another 16% are building authority through backlinks. A little less than a quarter of respondents (22.8%) haven’t adopted any of the strategies above.
AEO agency services for emerging trends
Brands have an opportunity to influence the answers LLMs provide, and acting quickly can help them differentiate their products and correct any inaccurate information. Most marketing teams understand that AI search visibility needs to become part of their digital and content marketing strategies. However, many organizations are unclear about where to start and which techniques will get the best results.
As a dedicated AEO agency, On Marketing offers services across four key AI
search optimization categories:
- AI visibility reports to track brand visibility by platform with metrics on sentiment analysis, query topics, and competitor analysis.
- User search query analysis to identify target keywords, questions, semantic keywords, and topic clusters.
- Authority content that emphasizes expertise, including blog articles, original research, guides, e-books, and guest articles.
- Website optimization to make digital properties LLM friendly through content structuring, schema markup, and llms.txt file creation.
Reach out to us anytime, and check out our full Trends in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) 2025 Report.
Don’t forget that AI search engines give preference to statistics and trends, especially those with numbers. The more recent, the better. If you’re interested in producing original data for your own report, infographic, or blog article, we can help you run a survey through Prolific or your platform of choice and create thought leadership content that’s optimized for AI search.