Shruti Kaushik

ResearchAI search

B2B Buyers Ask AI Before Sales: The 2026 Data

Half of B2B software buyers now start research in an AI chatbot. The verified 2024 to 2026 data on AI search in buying, and what founders should publish.

By , , 5 min read

On this page
  1. 1. Gartner's 25% forecast and what happened to the click
  2. 2. Half of software buyers now start in a chatbot
  3. 3. Sellers arrive late, and the list is already set
  4. 4. The scale of the tools buyers are using
  5. 5. What AI answers actually cite
  6. What this means for a founder
  7. Sources

B2B buyers now form their vendor shortlist inside AI chatbots, long before a sales rep hears from them. In G2's 2026 survey, 51% of software buyers said they start research in a chatbot more often than in Google, and 6sense finds that buyers only reach out once they are about 61% through the journey. If an AI tool describes your company badly, or leaves it out, you may lose the deal before you know it existed.

#1. Gartner's 25% forecast and what happened to the click

In February 2024, Gartner predicted that search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026, with AI chatbots and virtual agents taking share. That forecast was about query volume. The better-measured change since then is what happens to clicks when people still use Google.

Pew Research tracked 68,879 real Google searches by 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. When an AI summary appeared, users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% when there was no summary. Only about 1% of visits included a click on a link inside the summary. People also ended their browsing session after 26% of pages with a summary, compared with 16% without one.

Two vendor studies point the same way. Ahrefs compared 300,000 keywords between December 2023 and December 2025 and found that position-one click-through rate was 58% lower on keywords with an AI Overview. Seer Interactive, working from 3,119 search terms across 42 client organizations, saw organic CTR on AI Overview queries fall 61% and paid CTR fall 68% between June 2024 and September 2025.

#2. Half of software buyers now start in a chatbot

G2 surveyed 1,076 B2B software buyers and decision-makers in March 2026 for its report The Answer Economy. The share who start research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google reached 51%, up from 29% a year earlier.

The chatbot's answer changes who wins. In the same survey, 69% chose a different vendor than they had planned because a chatbot recommended it, and about one in three bought from a vendor they had never heard of. Demand Gen Report's coverage of the study adds that 71% of buyers rely on chatbots for software research and that ChatGPT accounts for 63% of the research done in chatbots.

#3. Sellers arrive late, and the list is already set

6sense's 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report, based on just under 4,000 respondents, shows how little room sales has. First contact with a seller happens at about 61% of the buying journey, down from about 69% in earlier years. Buyers initiated 79% of first engagements.

The shortlist matters more than the pitch. The eventual winner was on the buyer's Day One list 95% of the time in 2025. The same report found that 94% of buyers use large language models somewhere in their buying process.

Put those figures together and the order of events is plain. A buyer asks a chatbot, gets a list, does most of the work alone, then contacts the vendors already on it.

#4. The scale of the tools buyers are using

These are not niche products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at DevDay in October 2025 that more than 800 million people use ChatGPT every week. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said the service handled 780 million queries in May 2025.

#5. What AI answers actually cite

AI tools build their answers from sources, and those sources are not mostly vendor websites. Profound analysed 680 million citations from August 2024 to June 2025. Wikipedia was ChatGPT's top source at 47.9% of its top-ten citations, while Reddit led both Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. LinkedIn, G2 and Gartner all appeared in the top tens.

Citation habits also shift fast. A Semrush study of more than 230,000 prompts found the share of ChatGPT responses citing Reddit fell from about 60% in early August 2025 to about 10% by mid-September, while LinkedIn appeared in nearly 15% of Google AI Mode responses. Being cited also correlates with clicks: Seer measured organic CTR of 0.70% for brands cited in an AI Overview against 0.52% for those not cited.

Metric Figure Source
Buyers starting in a chatbot over Google 51% (from 29%) G2, 2026
Chose a different vendor after chatbot advice 69% G2, 2026
Point of first seller contact ~61% of journey 6sense, 2025
Winner on Day One shortlist 95% 6sense, 2025
Clicks on results with vs without AI summary 8% vs 15% Pew Research, 2025
Position-one CTR drop with AI Overview 58% Ahrefs, 2026

#What this means for a founder

  1. Publish answer-first pages. Pew found question-style searches triggered an AI summary 60% of the time. Write pages that state what you do, for whom and at what price in the first two sentences, then answer the specific questions buyers type.
  2. Keep your entity details identical everywhere. Use the same company name, category, founder name and one-line description on your site, LinkedIn, G2 and Crunchbase, so models do not stitch together conflicting versions of you.
  3. Earn mentions on the sites AI cites. Reddit, LinkedIn, G2, Gartner and Forbes all show up in the citation data. Founder posts on LinkedIn, real answers in relevant subreddits and customer reviews on G2 put your name where the models read.

#Sources

By Shruti Kaushik

Quick questions

How many B2B buyers start their research with AI chatbots?

G2's 2026 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers found that 51% start with an AI chatbot more often than with Google, up from 29% in G2's 2025 Buyer Behavior Report.

How far into the buying journey do B2B buyers contact a vendor?

6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report puts first contact at about 61% of the buying journey, and buyers initiated 79% of those first engagements.

Do AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites?

Yes. Pew Research found users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared versus 15% without one, and Ahrefs measured a 58% lower position-one click-through rate on keywords with an AI Overview.

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