AI search use rose 70% while consumer trust fell 28 points in a year

More people are using AI search than ever before. Fewer of them trust what it returns.

That tension sits at the center of a new survey published by Search Engine Land, conducted by Fractl (the author, Kelsey Libert, is Fractl’s co-founder, a fact the piece discloses upfront). The study polled 1,008 U.S. consumers and 150 marketers, and the headline figure lands hard: the share of consumers who find AI search more helpful than traditional search fell from 82% in 2025 to 54% in 2026. Twenty-eight percentage points, twelve months.

Usage has not stalled. Trust has.

Seventy percent of respondents say they use AI tools for search more than they did a year ago. Only 3% use them less. Adoption is no longer a useful metric for measuring AI search health. The real signal is what users believe about the quality of what they receive.

On that count, the deterioration is sharper than the headline number suggests. The 54% who still find AI helpful are largely hedging: 37% say “somewhat more helpful,” and only 17% say “much more helpful.” Enthusiasm has collapsed while usage has plateaued at high levels.

The AI-skeptic cohort, those who find AI search less helpful than traditional search, sat at 3% in 2025. It now stands at 17%. That is nearly a sixfold increase in one year.

Brand trust is the next casualty.

In 2025, 20% of consumers said heavy AI use in a brand’s marketing would reduce their trust in that brand. In 2026, that figure is 39%. This is no longer an abstract concern about content quality. It is a reputational variable with a measurable year-over-year trajectory.

The demographic splits matter for targeting decisions. Gen Z is the most punishing cohort: 54% say heavy AI use in marketing would decrease their trust, compared with 32% of boomers and 33% of Gen X. Women are more likely to penalize AI-heavy content than men (44% versus 34%). Boomers now find AI search more helpful than Gen Z does, 63% to 47%. The generation that uses AI most for search trusts it the least.

Disclosure is the gap every brand should be measuring.

Consumer expectations around labeling are effectively universal. Across every content format, more than 80% of respondents want AI-generated content identified as such: video leads at 91%, followed by images at 90%, audio at 87%, and written content at 84%. Strong agreement, not just agreement, exceeds 50% in every category.

The supply side is nowhere close. The survey notes that roughly 20% of brands currently meet disclosure expectations, with a fuller breakdown promised in Part 2. That gap between near-universal consumer demand and roughly one-in-five brand compliance is where reputational exposure sits right now.

Separately, 64% of consumers believe AI will replace traditional search engines within five years. That is down only slightly from 66% in 2025. The belief in AI’s eventual dominance is holding. The satisfaction with the current product is not.

What this means for your next 90 days.

The study comes from the agency Libert co-founded, in partnership with Search Engine Land. The figures are worth using carefully. They are directionally consistent with adjacent research but originate from a vendor with a consulting interest in the AI-content-quality space. Weight them accordingly.

That said, the disclosure gap is the actionable variable here. If your GEO content strategy involves scaling AI-generated or AI-assisted output, you now have survey data suggesting that doing so without explicit labeling carries measurable trust penalties, concentrated among Gen Z and women. The 28-point helpfulness drop is a market signal, not a one-brand problem. Brands that move on disclosure standards before a regulatory or platform mandate forces the question will have a short window to differentiate.

Producing less AI content is not the only answer. Producing disclosed, quality-controlled AI content may be.

Figures sourced from “AI search adoption rises as consumer trust declines: Study” by Kelsey Libert, published by Search Engine Land on June 17, 2026, based on a Fractl survey of 1,008 U.S. consumers and 150 marketers.