Only a tiny share of searches are people ready to buy: around 3% at most, and on Google itself well under 1%. The rest are people looking things up, comparing options, checking facts, or heading back to a brand they already know. That's where buying decisions are actually made, and it's where most marketing budgets aren't.
The 3% figure
The clearest picture comes from Google itself. When SparkToro and Datos analysed 332 million Google searches made by a US panel over 21 months, just 0.69% were transactional: someone ready to buy. Another 14.5% were commercial, people researching products and services. Just over half were informational, and about a third were navigational: people heading to a website they already knew.
AI search shows the same pattern. BrightEdge found transactional prompts were the smallest category in both Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT, at 2% and 3%.
However you measure it, fewer than one search in thirty is someone with their wallet out.
And the share is shrinking. A widely cited Penn State study in 2008 put transactional searches at about 10%. The methods differ, so the numbers aren't a perfect like-for-like, but the direction is clear: buying is a smaller and smaller part of what people search for.
Research isn't idle browsing
It's tempting to dismiss the 97% as people who aren't ready to buy. That's a mistake.
Research is where the shortlist gets made. On Google, commercial research searches outnumber transactional ones by about twenty to one. In AI chat it's the same story: Measure Protocol found that more than one in five ChatGPT conversations show some commercial intent, mostly brand research and category exploration. By the time someone types a buying search, they've usually already decided who they're buying from.
In other words, the 3% is where the sale is collected. The 97% is where it's won.
Why paid search misses most of the journey
Pay-per-click advertising was built for the 3%. It's very good at catching someone at the moment they're ready to buy. It's much less good at earning their trust in the weeks before.
And the research moments are increasingly answered before an ad gets a look in. On Google, an AI-written summary now sits at the top of many results pages, above both the ads and the organic links; on searches where it appears, paid click-through rates fell 68%. In Google's AI Mode and in ChatGPT, the answer comes with a short list of names, and ads sit underneath it. The recommendation has already been made.
If your marketing only shows up at the 3% moment, you're paying to compete for buyers your competitors have already convinced.
How to win the 97%
The brands that win research searches do three things well.
They answer real questions. Not the questions they'd like to be asked, but the ones buyers type in: how much does it cost, how long does it take, what should I avoid, how do I compare suppliers. Start with your sales team's most common questions.
They answer in more than one format. AI search draws on video, articles, images and audio. YouTube is the most-cited domain in Google's AI Overviews. A brand that answers the same question on video, in an article and in a short clip gives AI search more evidence that it's a credible voice.
They keep it current. Research content isn't a campaign that ends. It's a library that needs refreshing, so it stays accurate and keeps being recommended.
This is what we mean by premium content: not more blog posts, but crafted answers in every format, made once and kept working.
Own your fame
Here's the part most brands miss. Your buyers will research you whether you publish anything or not. The only question is where the answers come from.
If you don't answer the questions about your business, your category and your prices, someone else will. A forum thread. A two-year-old review. A competitor's blog. A listicle written by someone who's never used your product. AI search reads all of it, and when your own voice is missing it fills the gap with whatever it can find.
There's a second reason this matters. About a third of Google searches are navigational: people looking for a brand they've already heard of. Every one of those searches is fame you earned somewhere else. The stronger and more trusted your presence during research, the more people come back searching for you by name, and that's a search no competitor can outbid you on.
Owning your fame means making sure the answers buyers find come from sources you control or sources people trust:
- Your owned media: your website, your YouTube channel, your podcast, your articles. Places where the facts are yours, accurate and up to date.
- Trusted media: respected trade press, credible industry voices, genuine customer stories and partners who talk about you. Third-party sources that carry weight with buyers and with AI.
What you don't want is your reputation being written by unresearched channels: anonymous comments, outdated pages and content farms that have never spoken to you or your customers.
This isn't about controlling the conversation. It's about making sure the best, most accurate version of your story is the easiest one to find. When it is, AI search has a credible source to cite, and your buyers arrive already knowing what you stand for.
Rebalance, don't abandon
None of this means switching off your ads. The 3% still matters, and it's where the money changes hands. But if most of your budget chases 3% of searches, it's worth asking who's talking to your buyers during the other 97%.
A practical starting point:
- List the ten questions your buyers ask before they ever contact you.
- Ask ChatGPT and Google those questions. Note whose names come up.
- Pick the questions you could answer better than anyone, and answer them properly, on video and in writing.
- Shift a slice of next quarter's paid budget into that content, and measure enquiries, not just clicks.
Be there while they're deciding
Your buyers are researching right now. The only question is whose answers they're reading: yours, or someone else's version of you.
Little Orchard helps businesses find the questions their customers are asking, and turns a few days of production into a library of video, articles and imagery that answers them. Email info@littleorchardmedia.com and we'll show you what your buyers find when they research your market.
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