Searches for AI SDRs now equal 72% of searches for SDR jobs, up from 12% three years ago

A Hollerly study of US Google search demand for AI sales development agents and for human SDR and BDR roles, October 2022 to August 2026.

Key findings

• For every 100 US searches for SDR and BDR jobs, there were 72 searches for AI SDRs and AI sales agents between September 2025 and August 2026.
• Three years earlier (October 2022 to September 2023) the figure was 12.
• US searches for AI SDR and AI sales agent terms grew 8.7x, from 9,620 to 83,840 a year.
• Searches for SDR and BDR jobs also grew, up 43% to 116,850 a year.
• AI SDR interest came closest to job searches in April 2025, at 98% of SDR job search volume.
• "ai sdr" alone drew 21,100 US searches in the latest 12 months, and "ai sales agent" drew 14,880.

Two kinds of demand, both growing

Sales development is getting attention from two directions. Teams are researching AI agents that can prospect, write first-touch messages and book meetings. At the same time, job seekers keep searching for SDR and BDR roles. We compared the two using US Google search volume.

Interest in AI SDRs barely registered in late 2022. Over the following two years it climbed steeply, peaking in early 2025. In April 2025, searches for AI SDR and AI sales agent terms reached 98% of the volume of SDR and BDR job searches.

Over the latest 12 months the AI terms drew 83,840 searches against 116,850 for SDR and BDR jobs, a ratio of 72 to 100. That is below the 77 to 100 of the prior 12 months, as AI SDR searches settled from their early 2025 high, but far above the 12 to 100 of 2022 to 2023.

Job searches did not shrink

The rise in AI interest did not come with a fall in job searches. SDR and BDR job searches were 43% higher in the latest 12 months than three years earlier. Searches for "sales development representative jobs" alone rose from 18,300 to 41,100 a year.

How to read this

These numbers measure interest, not headcount or replacement. A search for "ai sdr" might come from a sales leader evaluating software, a founder building one, or an SDR curious about new tools. The data shows that AI sales development has become a mainstream research topic in a short time, while demand for SDR and BDR roles has held up.

Hollerly's AI SDR software researches leads, writes LinkedIn and email outreach and drafts replies, with a person approving every campaign.

About the data

• Data: monthly US Google search volume (English), October 2022 to August 2026.
• Sample: two keyword baskets. AI basket: 22 generic phrasings such as "ai sdr", "ai bdr", "ai sales agent", "ai sales assistant" and "ai cold calling" (17 distinct terms with volume). Jobs basket: 20 phrasings such as "sdr jobs", "remote bdr jobs" and "sales development representative jobs" (17 distinct terms). No vendor names. Full lists are in the Raw tab.
• Calculation: close variants that share one grouped search volume (identical monthly series) count once. The ratio is AI basket searches divided by jobs basket searches for the same 12 months, times 100.
• Spikes: isolated one-month spikes that do not match surrounding months (for example a keyword jumping from about 5,000 to 165,000 searches for a single month) are replaced with the keyword's centered 7-month rolling median when they exceed 4 times that median. Raw values are in the Raw tab of data.xlsx.
• Limitations: search volumes are rounded estimates, and new AI terms appear quickly, so a fixed basket may undercount newer phrasings. Job searches are a proxy for job-seeker interest, not for open roles.

Sources

• US Google search volume (English), average monthly searches, October 2022 to August 2026