Graphic · AI Content · 2025–2026

AI-Generated Content Statistics (2026)

The AI Gradient: from Google's #1 result down to #10, pages that are at least 80% AI-written only creep from 8.4% to 11.7%. Fully AI pages rank and get indexed, one in ten webpages now shows AI authorship, and from August 2026 the text itself is starting to carry a watermark.

Fig. 1

The AI Gradient

AI content in Google search results: share of ranking pages in each AI-content band, by position 1–10, June 2026. Blue: pages that are at least 80% AI-generated, drawn first so their share lines up like a ruler.

Very high (≥80% AI)High (50–80%)Moderate (20–50%)Low (<20%)
0%25%50%75%100%Very-high-AI share: 8.4%–11.7%#18.4%8.1%Moderate (20–50%) 27.5%Low (<20%) 56%#29%8.8%Moderate (20–50%) 27.6%Low (<20%) 54.6%#39.6%9.5%Moderate (20–50%) 27.4%Low (<20%) 53.5%#49.8%10%Moderate (20–50%) 26.9%Low (<20%) 53.3%#510%10.1%Moderate (20–50%) 26.9%Low (<20%) 53%#610.7%10.2%Moderate (20–50%) 26.5%Low (<20%) 52.6%#710.2%10.1%Moderate (20–50%) 27.7%Low (<20%) 52%#811.1%9.8%Moderate (20–50%) 28%Low (<20%) 51.1%#911.3%10.2%Moderate (20–50%) 28.1%Low (<20%) 50.4%#1011.7%9.5%Moderate (20–50%) 27.7%Low (<20%) 51.1%

Ahrefs ran its own AI content detector on pages from the top 10 of 100,000 SERPs (June 2026); about 150,000 pages had enough text (350+ words) to classify. Shares are detector estimates, not confirmed authorship. Rows #1, #8 and #9 sum to 99.9% because Ahrefs rounded each band, so their strips show each band as a share of the row; the table lists the published values.

SourceAhrefs (Jul 2026)1 · Full citations
Top-3 Google pages that are 100% AI-generated
5.3%
9.0% are at least 80% AI (June 2026, detector estimate)
SourceAhrefs (Jul 2026)1 · Full citations
Webpages showing significant signs of AI authorship
10%
Over one-third of pages published since ChatGPT's release (July 2026)
SourcePew Research Center2 · Full citations
AI providers signed up to mark AI output in the EU
95
Section 1 signatories, incl. Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI
SourceEuropean Commission3 · Full citations
Gemini responses in Google's live watermark quality test
~20M
Watermarked vs. not: thumbs-up rates differed by 0.01%
SourceDathathri et al., Nature (2024)4 · Full citations
Fig. 2

Nearly 1 in 10 top-3 Google results is at least 80% AI

AI content in top-ranking pages: share of position 1–3 pages by AI-content band, June 2026, %

54.7%27.5%8.8%9.0%
  • Low (<20% AI)54.7%54.7%
  • Moderate (20–50%)27.5%27.5%
  • High (50–80%)8.8%8.8%
  • Very high (≥80% AI)9%9.0%
  • All top-3 pages100%100%

The 5.3% of top-3 pages scored as 100% AI-generated sit inside the 9.0% very-high band; they are not in addition to it. Pages under 50% AI make up 82.2% of top-3 rankings.

SourceAhrefs (Jul 2026)1 · Full citations
Fig. 3

Heavily AI pages get indexed only 9 points less often

Does Google index AI content? Indexation rate by the page's AI-content level, 2026, % of pages

Low AI49.28%Moderate AI43.38%High AI40.72%Very high AI40.35%

Sample: 1,000,000 pages from Ahrefs' crawler, one per domain; about 100,000 had enough text to classify. A page counts as indexed if it ranks for at least one keyword, had a Search Console impression since January 2026, or matches an exact-URL site: search. The 8.93-point gap (49.28 − 40.35) is our derived math.

SourceAhrefs (Jul 2026)1 · Full citations
Fig. 4

AI-written text is spreading fastest on .com sites

How much of the internet is AI-generated: % of English webpages showing significant signs of AI authorship, by domain, six-month averages, 2021–2026

02%4%6%8%10%H1 2021H1 2022H1 2023H1 2024H1 20252026.com9.35% in 2026.org4.59% in 2026.edu1.03% in 2026.gov0.76% in 2026

Pew ran the open-weight Open Pangram detector on 490,000 English webpage texts sampled from Common Crawl, January 2021 to July 2026. Pew labels each six-month average by its start date (e.g. 2026-01-01); the 2026 point covers crawls from January 2026 on. Small samples make .edu and .gov noisy (e.g. 200 .gov pages in H2 2023).

SourcePew Research Center2 · Full citations
Fig. 5

74% of new webpages already contained some AI text in 2025

AI content on new webpages: 900,000 English pages first crawled in April 2025, by detector verdict, %

25.8%71.7%
  • Pure human25.8%25.8%
  • Mix of AI and human71.7%71.7%
  • Pure AI2.5%2.5%
  • All new pages100%100%

One page per domain. Ahrefs reports 74.2% of pages contained AI content (mixed plus pure AI). Within the mix, Ahrefs lists 25.86% moderate, 20.50% substantial and 15.51% dominant AI use; the remaining ~9.8 points (our derived math) are not itemized in the study.

SourceAhrefs (May 2025)5 · Full citations
Fig. 6

Average AI share rises just 3.8 points from #1 to #10

AI content and Google rankings: average AI-content level of ranking pages by position, June 2026, %

010%20%30%40%#1#2#3#4#5#6#7#8#9#1030.9%27.1%

Ahrefs averaged a sample of 15,000 pages per position. Median AI levels follow the same slope, from 17.1% at #1 to 19.5% at #10. The 3.8-point rise (30.9 − 27.1) is our derived math.

SourceAhrefs (Jul 2026)1 · Full citations
Fig. 7

"It's not just X, it's Y" phrasing has nearly tripled online

AI writing tells on the web: uses per 10,000 words, early 2026 vs. early 2023 (multiple)

Negative parallelism2.71×AI vocabulary2.18×Em dashes1.93×Oxford commas1.63×

Our derived math from Pew's six-month averages for pages published after Nov. 30, 2022: negative parallelism 0.87 → 2.36, AI vocabulary (words such as "delve", "interplay" and "testament") 11.94 → 26.02, em dashes 5.79 → 11.19, Oxford commas 34.04 → 55.51 per 10,000 words (H1 2023 vs. 2026). Pew describes these as "nearly tripled", "more than doubled", "about twice" and "a 63% increase".

SourcePew Research Center2 · Full citations
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