Research
Generative engine optimization statistics: what US search data shows
These generative engine optimization statistics come from one dataset we pulled and cleaned ourselves: US Google Ads search volumes for 169 groups of English search phrases about GEO, AEO, AI visibility and LLM SEO, month by month from September 2025 to August 2026. Together they average about 75,000 searches a month. They show what people search for on Google — not how AI engines answer.
Generative engine optimization statistics at a glance
All figures are for the United States, English, September 2025 to August 2026, pulled on 18 September 2026. Single phrases are shown as Google Ads reports them; totals are rounded to the nearest 100 and shares to whole percent.
- About 75,000 searches a month across 169 phrase groups about optimizing for AI search and measuring it.
- “Generative engine optimization” averages 4,400 searches a month — the most of the field's own names. The broader “ai search engine optimization” averages 6,600.
- 54% of the demand has commercial intent, 44% informational, 2% navigational.
- Among phrases with a cost per click (121 of 169 groups, 88% of the volume), the volume-weighted CPC is $33 and the median is $28.
- Monthly demand fell 63% from September to November 2025, then rose 70% from November 2025 to August 2026.
- August 2026 was the only month in the series where informational searches (39,400) outnumbered commercial ones (38,400).
- Of 143 phrase groups with at least 100 searches a month and a year-on-year figure, 118 grew, 21 fell and 4 were flat.
Which name for the field do people search?
The same work goes by several names. Generative engine optimization gets the most searches of the specific names, at 4,400 a month, ahead of answer engine optimization at 2,400. If you are unsure how the two differ, AEO vs GEO explains it — and people ask: “aeo vs geo” gets 1,600 searches a month and “geo vs aeo” another 880.
The names are moving in different directions. “Generative engine optimization” went from 6,600 searches in September 2025 to 3,600 in August 2026 (−45% year on year). “Answer engine optimization” stayed between 1,900 and 2,900 (+21%). “AI visibility” rose from 390 in October and November 2025 to 1,000–1,300 in mid-2026 (+376%). “LLM SEO” went the other way, from 1,000–1,300 in autumn 2025 to 480–590 in the summer of 2026 (−41%).
The tables below give every month for the four names, plus their difficulty and click price.
Demand over 12 months: the September spike and the November trough
September 2025 is the highest month in the series, at 128,300 searches. It is not typical. Sixteen phrase groups had at least 1,000 searches that month — five or more times their October figure. Together they make up 75% of the fall from September to October. Almost all are tool and tracker searches: “ai visibility tool(s)” went from 9,900 to 1,000, “ai search visibility tool(s)” from 6,600 to 480 and “aeo tool(s)” from 5,400 to 390. Google Ads data does not say why. We treat September 2025 as an outlier, not a baseline.
November 2025 is the low point, at 46,900. From there, demand rose to 79,900 in August 2026: commercial searches by 53%, informational ones by 87%.
March 2026 stands out again, at 102,600. Searches for “semrush ai visibility toolkit” went from 5,400 in February to 9,900. Six long, question-like phrases — such as “most reliable ai search optimization tool for data accuracy” — went from 70–90 searches in February to 1,600–1,900 in March and back to 90–170 in April.
Fastest-growing searches
The fastest growth is in basic questions and in buying searches. “What is ai search optimization” reached 1,000 searches in August 2026, “ai search optimization agency” and “best ai visibility tool(s)” 1,000 each. Year-on-year percentages here are large because the starting points in August 2025 were small, so read them with the monthly counts next to them.
Most expensive clicks
Advertisers pay the most for searches that name a provider type. “Generative engine optimization company/companies” has a CPC of $291.41 and “llm seo services” $253.79, both on fewer than 200 searches a month. Higher-volume tool searches cost less per click but still sit around $60–80: “ai visibility tool(s)” at $60.81 on 1,600 searches, “best ai visibility tool(s)” at $81.38 on 480.
72 phrase groups have a CPC of $20 or more. They hold 60% of all searches in the dataset. CPCs on low-volume phrases move a lot between pulls; the top-of-page bid ranges in the table are a steadier guide.
How much of the topic is informational?
Measured by average monthly searches, 54% of the demand is commercial (95 groups), 44% informational (68 groups) and 2% navigational (6 groups). Summed over the 12 months the split is almost the same: 54%, 43% and 2%.
Month by month, the commercial share ranged from 60% in March 2026 to 48% in August 2026. Intent labels come from DataForSEO, not from us.
How we measured
- Source: Google Ads search volumes for the United States, English, retrieved through DataForSEO on 18 September 2026. Each record carries 12 monthly values (September 2025 to August 2026), a 12-month average, CPC, top-of-page bid range, keyword difficulty and search intent.
- Starting set: 217 phrases from our keyword research on this topic.
- Off-topic phrases removed: 28 phrases (79,270 searches a month) whose usual meaning is not being found in AI search — AI-text detectors and general ChatGPT tools (“chatgpt checker” alone is 49,500), AI search engines themselves (“ai search tools”), citation generators (“ai citations generator”), model engineering (“llm inference optimization”), monitoring of AI systems (“ai monitoring”) and a government agency that shares the GEO acronym.
- Close variants merged: Google Ads reports singular and plural or reordered phrases as one figure. Where two phrases had identical monthly series, CPC and bid range, we counted them once — 20 pairs, leaving 169 groups.
- Year-on-year change is DataForSEO's figure for August 2026 against August 2025. That base month falls outside our series, so we cannot recompute it; 12 phrase groups have no year-on-year figure.
- Rounding: single phrases as Google Ads reports them; totals to the nearest 100, so table columns may not add up exactly; percentages to whole numbers.
What this data does not tell you
- It is US only. Demand in other countries and languages can look different.
- Google Ads rounds volumes into bands (for example 390, 480, 590, 720) and merges close variants. Small phrases jump between bands, which makes their percentage changes large.
- We kept 30 long, question-like phrases with no CPC (about 5,100 searches a month, 7%) because they are on topic. They move sharply between months, as in March 2026.
- Some kept phrases, such as “geo optimization”, can also mean geographic targeting. Google Ads volumes cannot separate the two meanings.
- It measures Google searches, not AI answers. It cannot tell you how often ChatGPT or Gemini names a brand. To see that for your own brand, run the free AI visibility checker — Llamat is our product, and the checker uses different data from this page.