SEO Stats in New Zealand: AI Search Trends in 2026

This page collects the SEO stats in New Zealand that survive checking. Every one of these 59 figures was read inside its source document and credited to the organisation that produced it. The sources are the Commerce Commission, AUT's Journalism, Media and Democracy research centre, IAB New Zealand, the Advertising Standards Authority and Pew Research Center, published between July 2025 and August 2026.

New Zealand has a data problem that shapes this page. There is no official measurement of search market share, no current household internet survey, and no published government data on business AI use. What exists is solid but narrow, and this page says plainly where the gaps sit.

The connectivity baseline

The Commerce Commission is the only New Zealand regulator publishing current data that bears on this topic, and its remit is infrastructure rather than search. Its 2025 report covers the year to 30 June 2025.

• 85.2% of New Zealand addresses sat inside a regulated fibre area at 30 June 2025, up from 84.7% a year earlier.
• 84% of urban New Zealand broadband connections used fibre at 30 June 2025, making it the dominant urban technology.
• 73.5% was fibre uptake across New Zealand addresses passed by regulated fibre networks at 30 June 2025.
• 82% of urban New Zealand addresses were covered by 5G fixed wireless in June 2025, up from 67% in 2024 and 33% in 2023.
• 99% of urban New Zealand addresses were within coverage of a 4G fixed wireless service in June 2025.
• 2.01 million fixed broadband connections were active in New Zealand in the 2024/25 year.
• 37.8 fixed line broadband connections per 100 population were recorded in New Zealand in 2024/25.
• 184 Mbps was New Zealand's median fixed broadband download speed in May 2025, ranking 17th in the OECD.
• 176 Mbps was the OECD average fixed broadband download speed in May 2025, which New Zealand exceeded.
• 1.3 per 100 people was New Zealand's rate of satellite broadband connections in 2024/25, the highest in the OECD.

Source for all statistics above: 2025 Telecommunications Monitoring Report, Commerce Commission.

How much New Zealanders use their connections

Consumption is rising faster than connection counts, which matters for anyone planning page weight, video or mobile-first content.

• 548 GB was the average monthly data use per New Zealand fixed broadband connection in 2024/25, up from 482 GB.
• 8.40 GB was the average monthly mobile data usage per New Zealand connection in 2024/25, up from 7.36 GB.
• 6.9 million mobile connections were active in New Zealand in 2024/25.
• 129 active mobile connections per 100 population were recorded in New Zealand in 2024/25.
• 11% and 7% were the annual broadband and mobile switching rates in New Zealand in the year to June 2025.
• 69% was overall New Zealand consumer satisfaction with telecommunications in the year to June 2025, below the Commission's 80% benchmark.

Source for all statistics above: 2025 Telecommunications Monitoring Report, Commerce Commission.

How New Zealanders verify information they distrust

This is the most useful cluster on the page for search professionals. AUT asked New Zealanders where they would go to check something online they suspected was false. Search engines came third; AI chatbots came eighth.

• 53% of New Zealanders would check suspected false news through a news source they trust, the most common response in February 2026.
• 47% of New Zealanders would check suspected false news through official sources such as government websites, in February 2026.
• 46% of New Zealanders would check suspected false news through a search engine, in February 2026.
• 31% of New Zealanders would check suspected false news through a fact-checking website, in February 2026.
• 21% of New Zealanders would check suspected false news by reading comments from other users, in February 2026.
• 16% of New Zealanders would check suspected false news through Wikipedia, in February 2026.
• 15% of New Zealanders would check suspected false news through social media or a video network, in February 2026.
• 8% of New Zealanders would use an AI chatbot to check suspected false news, in February 2026.
• 4% of New Zealanders said they would not check suspected false news at all, in February 2026.

Source for all statistics above: Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand 2026, AUT Journalism, Media and Democracy research centre.

Trust in AI answers and AI-produced content

Generative AI is a system that produces new text or images in response to a prompt. New Zealanders are using it for information while remaining markedly wary of what it produces.

• 26% of New Zealanders said they trust news found in search engines in February 2026, up from 23% in 2025.
• 17% of New Zealanders said they trust news found on social media in February 2026, up from 13% in 2025.
• 12% of New Zealanders used ChatGPT as a source of news in February 2026.
• 4% of New Zealanders used other forms of AI as a news source in February 2026.
• 60% of New Zealanders were uncomfortable with news produced mostly by AI with some human oversight in February 2026, unchanged from 2025.
• 11% of New Zealanders were comfortable with news produced mostly by AI in February 2026, up from 8% in 2025.
• 27% and 34% of New Zealanders were respectively comfortable and uncomfortable with news produced mainly by humans with AI assistance, in February 2026.
• 53% and 46% of Americans and Europeans respectively were uncomfortable with mostly-AI-produced news in 2025, below the 60% recorded in New Zealand.

Source for all statistics above: Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand 2026, AUT Journalism, Media and Democracy research centre.

Where New Zealanders' attention actually goes

Online news sites remain the primary destination, and AI chatbots are barely visible as a main source. The gap between experimental use and habitual use is wide.

• 38% of New Zealanders named online news sites and apps as their main source of news in February 2026.
• 20% and 19% of New Zealanders named television and social media or video networks respectively as their main news source in February 2026.
• 1% of New Zealanders named AI chatbots as their main source of news in February 2026.
• 61% of New Zealanders paid most attention to traditional news media and journalists in February 2026.
• 27% of New Zealanders paid most attention to content creators who mostly focus on news, in February 2026.
• 61%, 44% and 28% of New Zealanders used Facebook, YouTube and Instagram respectively for news in the week before the February 2026 survey.
• 74% of New Zealanders were concerned about what is real and what is fake on the internet in February 2026.
• 78% of New Zealanders were actively avoiding news to some degree in February 2026, up from 73% in 2025.

Source for all statistics above: Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand 2026, AUT Journalism, Media and Democracy research centre.

What AI summaries do to clicks

An AI Overview is a generated summary placed above the traditional links on a results page. Answer Engine Optimisation is the practice of structuring content to be cited inside those answers rather than merely ranked beneath them.

No New Zealand study measures click behaviour around AI summaries. The Pew figures below come from a US browsing panel and are the best available proxy for a New Zealand audience.

• 18% of all Google searches in a US browsing panel produced an AI summary in March 2025.
• 8% of US Google visits where an AI summary appeared produced a click on a traditional search result in March 2025.
• 15% of US Google visits without an AI summary produced a click on a traditional result over the same period, nearly twice the rate.
• 1% of US visits to a page carrying an AI summary produced a click on a source cited inside that summary in March 2025.
• 26% of US Google pages with an AI summary ended the browsing session in March 2025, against 16% of pages showing only traditional results.
• 67 words was the median length of an AI summary in the March 2025 US sample.
• 88% of AI summaries examined in March 2025 cited three or more sources.
• 6% of sources linked in US AI summaries were .gov websites in March 2025, against 2% in standard search results.

Source for all statistics above: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results, Pew Research Center.

Which queries trigger an AI summary

Query shape predicts AI summary presence far more sharply than topic does. Longer, question-formed queries trigger summaries several times more often than short ones.

US Google searches, March 2025, n = 68,879. Source: Pew Research Center.

What businesses spend on search

Search is the largest single format in New Zealand digital advertising, and in 2025 it grew at the same rate as the market overall rather than losing ground to video.

• $1.44 billion was spent on search advertising in New Zealand in calendar 2025, up 12% year on year.
• $2.967 billion was total New Zealand digital advertising revenue in calendar 2025, up 12% year on year.
• $653.8 million was spent on video advertising in New Zealand in 2025, up 27% and accounting for 22% of digital revenue.
• $389.5 million was spent on classifieds and directories in New Zealand in 2025, up 7% year on year.
• $813.8 million was New Zealand digital advertising revenue in the December 2025 quarter alone, up 12% year on year.
• 24.4% and 23.2% were the shares of New Zealand digital advertising held by the Recruitment and Real Estate categories respectively in 2025.
• $4.115 billion was New Zealand advertising revenue across main media in calendar 2025, spanning nine media categories.
• $3.816 billion was the revised New Zealand main media advertising figure for 2024, restated after a change to social media estimate methodology.

Sources: search, digital, video, classifieds, quarterly and category figures, Q4 and CY2025 Digital Advertising Revenue Report, IAB New Zealand; main-media totals, Advertising Turnover Report 2025, Advertising Standards Authority.