Perplexity's browser went free and hit the top of the App Store. ChatGPT confirmed a super app strategy with 900 million weekly users. Google expanded AI Overviews into local and transactional search. Here is what UK businesses need to know.
AI Search in April 2026: What Changed, What It Means, and What to Do About It
April 2026 has been a busy month for AI search. If you track this space regularly, you will have noticed the pace of change accelerating. If you don't, you may have missed several developments that directly affect how your business appears - or fails to appear - when prospects use AI tools to make decisions.
This is our weekly breakdown. Each Friday we round up the developments that matter, cut the noise, and tell you what the implications are for UK businesses trying to build visibility in AI search.
Here is what happened this week.
Perplexity's Browser Went Free and Immediately Went Viral
Perplexity's standalone browser, Comet, launched as a premium £160-per-month product. In March 2026 it went free on iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac. Within 48 hours of its public iOS release it reached number three in the Overall chart on the US App Store - a genuinely rare moment for a browser, a product category that almost never generates viral consumer adoption.
Why does this matter for GEO? Because Comet is not just a browser. It is a context-aware AI assistant that knows which page you are on, integrates Deep Research directly into the browsing experience, and supports multi-step agentic task automation. The more of your prospects' browsing happens inside Comet, the more Perplexity's citation preferences determine whether your business appears in that research journey.
Perplexity processes approximately 780 million queries per month as of early 2026. That is a number that commands serious attention for any business optimising for B2B discovery.
The practical implication: Perplexity has distinct citation preferences. Unlike ChatGPT, which draws heavily from training data, Perplexity performs a live web search on every query. Its answers reflect your current digital footprint - recent content, current structured data, and how well your site is crawlable and parseable by AI bots. If your site blocks Perplexity's crawler or your content is buried in JavaScript, you are invisible to 780 million monthly queries.
ChatGPT Confirmed a Super App Strategy with 900 Million Weekly Users
OpenAI confirmed a major funding round valuing the business at $852 billion and announced a ChatGPT super app combining chat, coding, search, and agent capabilities into a single interface. The company reports 900 million weekly active users.
The strategic direction is significant. OpenAI is consolidating AI capabilities into a unified experience rather than maintaining separate tools. For businesses, this means ChatGPT's search function is not a side feature - it is becoming a primary discovery surface for nearly a billion people weekly.
The practical implication: ChatGPT primarily indexes content that has been explicitly crawled by GPTBot. Content behind paywalls, inside PDFs, or on sites that block GPTBot is largely invisible. If you have not audited your robots.txt file for GPTBot permissions, do it today.
Google Expanded AI Overviews into Local and Transactional Search
Google has expanded AI Overviews to a significantly wider range of query types in 2026, including local searches, product comparisons, and transactional queries. AI Overviews now appear on roughly 14% of all shopping queries - a 5.6x increase in four months.
The critical data point: 76.1% of URLs cited in Google AI Overviews also rank in the top 10 of traditional Google search results. The path to AI Overview visibility is not separate from traditional SEO - it runs through it.
Each AI Engine Cites Differently
A benchmark report analysing 680 million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity found a striking result: only 11% of domains are cited by both ChatGPT and Perplexity. The platforms draw from fundamentally different sources.
For UK B2B businesses the priority platforms are:
- ChatGPT for informational and research queries. Requires strong entity signals, well-structured long-form content, and GPTBot access.
- Perplexity for high-intent research queries from technical and professional audiences. Requires live crawlability and current, sourceable content.
- Google AI Overviews for commercial and local queries. Requires traditional SEO foundation plus FAQ schema and E-E-A-T signals.
LinkedIn Is the Most-Cited Professional Domain Across All AI Engines
LinkedIn is the most-cited domain for professional queries across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity. For a B2B business, your LinkedIn company page and your founders' personal profiles are GEO assets - not just social media channels.
The Competitive Window Is Still Open
GEO is still an early-mover discipline in the UK market. The majority of UK businesses have not yet run a GEO audit and have no programme to improve their visibility. That window will not remain open indefinitely.
At Thursday Thinking Digital, we run a live tracking programme across all five major AI engines for every client on our GEO programme. Contact us at hello@thursdaythinking.digital or use the form on this site.