In 2026, more B2B buyers started their vendor research in AI assistants, Google sent fewer clicks to websites, and AI agents began visiting sites on people’s behalf. AI answers also leaned more on third-party pages than on company websites. For a B2B website, this means stating your company’s facts clearly enough that every summary gets them right, making the smaller number of visits count, and staying easy to use for software that browses for people.
What changed this year
- Buyers start in chatbots. In G2’s Answer Economy research (March 2026, 1,076 B2B software buyers), 51% said they now start their research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google, up from 29% in 2025. 69% ended up choosing a different vendor than they had planned because of a chatbot’s recommendation.
- Google sends fewer clicks. SparkToro’s analysis of Similarweb data for January to April 2026 found that 68% of US Google searches ended without a click, up from 60% in 2024. When an AI Overview appears, click-through drops by close to 60%.
- AI answers quote other people’s pages. A July 2026 study by citations.press of 60,350 citations across 10,000 commercial prompts found that only 7% of ChatGPT’s citations and 4% of Claude’s pointed to a brand’s homepage. Comparison and “best of” pages made up most of the rest.
- Agents now visit websites. HUMAN Security’s report on agentic traffic for July 2026 found that 76% of what AI agents do on websites is discovery and research, such as reading pages and comparing options. Agentic browsers like Perplexity’s Comet and Claude in Chrome generate most of that traffic.
What this means for your website
Your website is less often where a buyer first meets you, and more often where they go to check what they’ve already been told. Fewer people arrive, they come later in their decision, and an assistant or an agent has often read the site before them.
Here’s what we’d do about it.
Be the source that summaries copy
The most useful thing a B2B website can do in 2026 is state its facts so plainly that every summary of it comes out right. Who you serve, where you operate, what you do, how an engagement works and how pricing is shaped should each be one clear sentence on a page that crawlers can read without running JavaScript.
This matters even though assistants rarely cite homepages. The comparison pages, directories and articles they do cite were written by people who read your site first. Old facts spread the same way. A positioning you dropped two years ago can survive in a directory listing and turn up again in an AI answer. Our earlier post, What “AI-ready” actually means for a website, covers the technical side.
Make the visit count
With fewer clicks, each visit carries more weight, and the visitor usually arrives with a shortlist already in mind. They come to check specific things: proof you’ve done this before, how you work, what it will roughly involve, and how to talk to someone.
So the pages that earn their keep are case studies with concrete outcomes, a plain “how we work” page, an honest answer about how pricing works, and a short contact form. Add “AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity…)” as an option in your “How did you hear about us?” field. Most of the time AI influences a buyer without a click you can track, and that field is often the only place you’ll see it.
Let agents read and act
An AI agent uses a website much like a person with a screen reader. It relies on labelled form fields, real buttons and links, headings in a sensible order, and text that is text rather than part of an image. So most of the work that makes a site accessible also makes it easier for agents. If your site meets IS 5568 / WCAG 2.1 AA, you’re most of the way there (what IS 5568 requires).
There’s also a new standard to watch. WebMCP lets a page tell browser agents directly what it can do, for example “submit an enquiry”, instead of leaving them to work it out from the screen. Google and Microsoft are behind it, and Chrome is testing it publicly, but no mainstream agent uses it yet. Keep an eye on it. There’s no need to build for it this year.
Earn the mentions you can’t publish yourself
Because AI answers lean on independent pages, part of being found now happens off your website. Accurate profiles on the directories your buyers use, inclusion in honest comparison articles, partner pages, podcasts and conference talks all feed the answers. Keep those listings current. They’re often the version of you an assistant reads first.
What we’d hold off on
A few things feel urgent right now, but we’d wait on them.
- Rebuilding for one assistant. The assistants change every month. Clear facts, readable HTML and good structured data work for all of them.
- Adding a chatbot to the site to “be AI-ready”. Being AI-ready means AI systems understand your site. Whether visitors should have a chatbot is a separate decision, with its own costs.
- Publishing lots of pages to cover every possible search. Thin pages water down the clear answers you want quoted. A smaller number of good pages does more.
A 30-minute check for this quarter
- Ask ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity: “What does [your company] do, and who is it for?” Save the answers as your baseline.
- Ask: “What are the best [your category] providers for [your buyer] in [your region]?” Note which pages they cite, and whether you’re on any of them.
- Read your homepage’s first paragraph. Does it say what you do, for whom and where, in plain words? If not, rewrite it first.
- Fill in your contact form using only the keyboard. If you get stuck, an agent probably will too.
- Add “AI assistant” to the “How did you hear about us?” options on your contact form.
Repeat steps 1 and 2 every quarter. Comparing the answers over time is the simplest way to see whether the work is paying off.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes on the results, that’s part of our AI and SEO ready work, or you can book a 20-minute call.
Sources
- G2, The Answer Economy (2026)
- SparkToro and Similarweb zero-click study, reported by Search Engine Land
- citations.press citation study, reported by The Next Hint
- HUMAN Security, State of Agentic Traffic, July 2026
- Spronta, The State of WebMCP: July 2026