Half of B2B software buyers now start with AI, not Google.
51% of B2B software buyers now start their research with an AI chatbot more often than with Google. That is up from 29% one year before, according to G2's 2026 AI Search Insight Report.
That's a fast swing. For years, "start with Google" was a safe assumption for how B2B software discovery worked, and most companies built their entire visibility strategy around it: SEO, paid search, review-site placement tuned for search rankings. That assumption is now wrong for more than half of buyers.
An AI chatbot doesn't return ten blue links for a buyer to sift through. It returns a shortlist, sometimes just one or two names, based on what the model has learned about your category. If you're not one of those names, you don't get a second chance further down the page, because there is no further down the page.
G2's finding is a big part of why we built Perpetuallie the way we did: buyer-intent prompt testing across the actual assistants buyers are using, not just traditional search rank tracking.