UK Internet Statistics for 2027: How British Customers Shop, Search and Use AI

Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, reports that people in the UK visited ChatGPT about 368 million times during 2024's first eight months. Over the same stretch of 2025 the figure reached 1.8 billion, which is almost five times as many in a single year. It's one of the clearest signs of how fast British internet habits are shifting, and it comes straight from the regulator.

We serve three main markets: the UK, the U.S. and the UAE. UK customers now spend more time online than ever, mostly on their phones. Compared with Americans, they put far more of their shopping online, and AI answers now appear in a large share of their searches. We've gathered the official figures that UK business owners and marketers ask about most, taken from Ofcom and the Office for National Statistics, and we explain what you can do with them.

UK internet statistics at a glance

How much time do UK adults spend online?

UK adults spend around four and a half hours online each day, according to Ofcom, which is 10 minutes more than the year before. Among women the average is 4 hours 43 minutes. Ofcom says most of that time is on a smartphone, so for most UK visitors your mobile site is effectively your website.

According to Ofcom's 2025 Online Nation report, the typical adult is online for four and a half hours each day, 10 minutes more than a year earlier. That's a big slice of waking time, though it's divided among messaging, video, social media, news and shopping. Your website or profile usually gets only a short moment in the middle of all that, so speed and clarity count for a lot. Our mobile internet statistics show how mobile sites measure up to that expectation.

How is AI changing UK search?

Ofcom reports that AI Overviews now appear in about 30% of UK searches, and 53% of adults say they often see these summaries. During the opening eight months of 2025, ChatGPT drew 1.8 billion visits from the UK, against 368 million a year before.

For businesses, this means two things. Fewer people click through from a results page when a summary answers the question, especially for general how-to and what-is searches. And the pages that get used in those summaries tend to be the ones with clear answers and sourced facts.

It also means brand matters more. When someone has their general question answered by AI and then wants a company to actually do the work, they search for a business, often by name or with "near me". Being known, well reviewed and easy to find at that second step is where UK businesses win or lose. Our AI search statistics cover the click data in detail.

How much do UK shoppers buy online?

UK shoppers spend close to three pounds in every ten online. The Office for National Statistics put online sales at 28.8% of Great Britain's retail sales in its latest monthly release, a slight dip from 28.9% the month before. In the U.S., the Census Bureau's figure is 17.1%, a much lower share.

Each month the ONS puts out this figure in its retail sales bulletin. Small moves from one month to the next, such as 28.9% to 28.8%, are normal and often just noise, so it's more useful to compare against the same period of the previous year.

Treat the comparison with the U.S. carefully. The two figures come from different agencies that define retail differently, and the countries differ in how their stores are spread out and how far deliveries travel. Both are official, and the broad point still holds: British shoppers rank near the top worldwide for buying online, which means UK retailers fight hard to be seen online. The full comparison is in our ecommerce statistics.

What do these numbers mean for different UK businesses?

The same statistics play out differently depending on what you sell. A few examples, all illustrative:

A local trade in a UK town. Customers search on their phones, often in a hurry. The Business Profile, reviews and a fast mobile page with a visible phone number matter more than anything else. AI summaries may answer "how much does a boiler service cost", but the customer still needs a trusted local company to do it.

An online retailer selling across the UK. With close to three in ten retail pounds spent online, competition for product searches is intense. Speed on product pages, clear delivery and returns information and a strong email list for repeat customers are the levers that pay.

A professional services firm. Accountants, solicitors and consultants face AI answers on many informational questions. Content that explains your process, your fees and what clients should expect, written by identifiable people, builds the trust that turns a search into an enquiry.

A hospitality business. Phones dominate, decisions are quick and reviews are read closely. Menus, opening hours and booking links need to work perfectly on a small screen.

What should UK businesses do?

1. Build for the phone first. Make pages load quickly, show your phone number clearly and keep forms short, then try it all on a real phone using mobile data.
2. Keep your Google Business Profile and listings accurate. For most service businesses, local searches still begin on Google Maps. Add the business to a few trusted directories, such as our online business directory, and keep the details identical in each.
3. Write for answers. Open each important page with the direct answer in its first two sentences, and give a source for your numbers.
4. Grow brand searches. Reviews, word of mouth, social activity and offline marketing all push people to search for your name, and AI can't answer that search on your behalf.
5. Track enquiries, not just rankings. With a basic KPI dashboard you can see which channel brings in your calls and form submissions.
6. Check your site. Our free website analysis checks mobile speed and SEO problems together, so you get one report covering both.

UK businesses come to us for SEO and paid search, and our Oxford International SEO audit is a UK project you can look at.

How to keep these figures current

Both sources are updated regularly: the ONS issues a monthly retail sales bulletin, while Ofcom publishes Online Nation once a year. When you quote these numbers in a plan or a pitch, go to the newest release for them and state the period, and don't pass along figures from a blog post (this one included).

Figures you'll see elsewhere that we left out

Many UK internet statistics pages quote figures from global data aggregators, such as how much web traffic comes from mobile devices and social media user estimates. A lot of those rest on modelling, ad-network data or panels we couldn't check, and the numbers differ widely from one source to the next. So we relied on Ofcom's regulator research and the ONS's official statistics.

Sources and method

Our sources were the retail sales bulletin from the Office for National Statistics, the quarterly e-commerce report from the U.S. Census Bureau (used for comparison) and the 2025 summary of Ofcom's Online Nation. We checked every figure against the source pages, and the ONS figures cover Great Britain.