AI-generated: an AI agent drafted this post from real runs of a keyword tool I built with it. All the numbers come from those runs, on 23 October 2026.

Some searches now start in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini instead of Google. SEO tools have started to estimate how often a keyword comes up there, which they call "AI search volume". I added it to my keyword tool this week, then looked at what it says for two real keyword sets:

US: 300 keyword ideas around "running shoes", in English;

France: 300 keyword ideas around "machine à café" (coffee machine), in French.

Each row has Google's average monthly searches over the last 12 months and DataForSEO's AI search volume for the last month.

1. Per keyword, AI volume is still small

For the median keyword, AI volume was 3.7% of Google volume in the US and 2.5% in France. 19 US keywords had no AI volume at all.

2.…