AI & Technology | SEO
How Is AI Actually Changing SEO in 2026?
A practical guide for B2B marketers navigating AI search, answer engines, and the new rules of organic visibility
Published: 27 January 2026 | Last Updated: 27 January 2026 | By Clwyd Probert, CEO & Founder
AI is fundamentally reshaping SEO in 2026 through three parallel shifts: Google AI Overviews now appear in 30% of UK searches, ChatGPT processes over 2 billion daily queries with 800 million weekly users, and AI-referred visitors convert at 4.4× higher rates than traditional organic traffic. For B2B marketers, this means traditional SEO strategies must evolve to include Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)—or risk becoming invisible to a growing segment of buyers who research through AI assistants before ever clicking a search result.
What Has Changed Since 2023?
When we first wrote about AI in SEO back in March 2023, ChatGPT had just launched and the industry was speculating about potential impacts. Three years later, the speculation has become measurable reality—and many of those early predictions proved wrong.
The biggest surprise? Google traffic didn't collapse as many predicted. Instead, something more nuanced happened: traffic held relatively steady for many sites, but click-through rates plummeted on queries where AI Overviews appear. Research from Seer Interactive found CTR dropped by 61% on queries with AI Overviews—meaning your content might rank #1 and still get fewer clicks than it did in 2023.
The other major shift is fragmentation. In 2023, optimising for Google was essentially optimising for search. In 2026, B2B buyers use ChatGPT for product research, Perplexity for comparisons, Google AI Overviews for quick answers, and Claude for detailed analysis. Each platform cites different sources—Ahrefs research shows only 12% of AI-cited URLs rank in Google's top 10 for the same query. Ranking in Google no longer guarantees visibility across AI search.
For B2B marketers already struggling to prove marketing ROI, this complexity adds another layer. The good news: Answer Engine Optimisation provides a structured approach to tackling this challenge, and the fundamentals of good content marketing still apply.
AI Search by the Numbers in 2026
Understanding the scale of AI search helps contextualise why this matters for B2B marketing. These statistics come from authoritative sources published in 2025 and early 2026:
Platform Adoption
- ChatGPT: 800-900 million weekly active users globally, processing over 2 billion daily queries
- UK AI Usage: 22.5 million people in the UK now use AI tools regularly (IAB UK, October 2025)
- Google AI Overviews: Now appear in approximately 30% of UK searches (Ofcom, December 2025)—a 536.6% year-on-year increase
- Perplexity: 22-45 million active users, processing 780 million queries monthly
- Google Market Share: Dropped below 90% globally for the first time since 2015, now at 89.6%
Business Impact
- Conversion rates: AI-referred visitors convert at 4.4× to 23× higher rates than traditional organic traffic (Ahrefs, 2025)
- B2B adoption: 89% of B2B buyers now use generative AI tools during their purchasing research (Forrester, 2024)
- Zero-click searches: 58.5-60% of Google searches now end without a click to any website
- CTR impact: Queries with AI Overviews see 61% lower click-through rates (Seer Interactive, September 2025)
Gartner predicts traditional search volume will drop by 25% by the end of 2026 as users shift to AI assistants. Whether that specific prediction proves accurate, the direction of travel is clear: AI search is not a future concern—it's a present reality affecting B2B buyer behaviour today.
Why B2B Marketers Should Care Right Now
The B2B sector is actually ahead of B2C in AI search adoption. According to Forrester's 2024 research, B2B buyers are 3× more likely than consumers to use generative AI during product research. This makes sense: B2B purchases involve higher stakes, longer evaluation periods, and more stakeholders—exactly the situations where AI assistants provide value.
When a SaaS Marketing Director asks ChatGPT "which HubSpot partner agencies specialise in B2B lead generation in the UK?", the AI's response directly shapes their consideration set. If your company isn't being recommended in those responses, you're losing opportunities before the prospect ever visits your website.
The conversion quality difference is striking. Whitehat SEO's analysis of client data shows AI-referred visitors demonstrate significantly higher engagement metrics than traditional organic traffic. These visitors arrive pre-qualified—they've already received an AI endorsement of your brand, making them more ready to convert. Some case studies report AI traffic converting at rates up to 27% compared to the typical 2-5% for organic visitors.
For marketers already struggling to prove ROI to leadership, this creates both challenge and opportunity. The challenge: traditional SEO metrics no longer capture the full picture. The opportunity: AI visibility is measurable, and early movers have a 12-18 month window to establish competitive advantage before the space becomes crowded.
How Traditional SEO Is Evolving for AI Search
The fundamentals of good SEO haven't changed: create valuable content that serves user intent, build genuine authority, and ensure technical excellence. What has changed is how these fundamentals need to be executed for AI visibility.
Content Structure for AI Extraction
AI systems don't read content the way humans do. They extract passages, summarise sections, and synthesise information from multiple sources. Research from BrightEdge (June 2025) shows 68% of organisations are now actively adapting their content strategies for AI search.
The key changes involve making content extractable. This means leading with direct answers (40-60 words that completely address the query), structuring sections to be standalone (each H2 should make sense without reading previous sections), and including comprehensive FAQ sections that capture the sub-questions AI expands queries into.
Brand Mentions Over Backlinks
Perhaps the most significant shift involves how AI determines which brands to recommend. Traditional SEO relied heavily on backlinks as authority signals. AI systems use something different: brand search volume shows a 0.334 correlation with AI citation likelihood, while backlinks show neutral or weak impact.
This means building brand visibility across multiple platforms—reviews, industry publications, social discussions—matters more than accumulating backlinks. AI systems form recommendations based on how frequently and positively a brand appears across their training data and real-time sources.
Platform-Specific Optimisation
Different AI platforms cite different sources. Ahrefs research reveals that 86% of top-cited sources are NOT shared across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Only 7 websites appear in the top 50 across all three platforms. This means a single optimisation strategy won't work—you need presence across multiple source types:
| Platform | Top Citation Sources |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Wikipedia (16.3%), Reuters, Apple News, established domains (45.8% from 15+ year-old sites) |
| Perplexity | Reddit (46.7%), YouTube (13.9%), Gartner, G2 for B2B |
| Google AI Overviews | Reddit (21%), YouTube (18.8%), Quora, recently updated content (2.5× more likely to appear) |
What B2B Companies Should Do Now
Based on Whitehat SEO's work with B2B clients across technology, professional services, and manufacturing, here's a practical roadmap for adapting your organic strategy:
1. Audit Your Current AI Visibility
Before optimising, understand your baseline. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude questions your buyers ask: "Best [your category] for [your target market]", "How to [problem you solve]", "[Competitor] alternatives". Document which brands appear and which sources get cited. This reveals both your competitive position and the content types AI prefers in your space.
2. Restructure High-Value Content for Extraction
Identify your 10-20 highest-traffic pages and restructure them for AI citation. This means adding direct answer blocks at the beginning (40-60 words), ensuring each section can stand alone without prior context, including statistics with source attribution, and embedding your brand name in quotable passages. Princeton research found adding statistics increases AI visibility by up to 115%.
3. Build Authority Across AI-Trusted Sources
AI systems learn from third-party sources more than brand websites. Focus on: generating reviews on G2 and Capterra (G2 captures 22-23% share of voice in AI B2B responses), contributing expert content to industry publications AI already cites, maintaining active presence on relevant Reddit communities, and ensuring your Wikipedia or Wikidata entries are accurate.
4. Configure Technical Infrastructure
Ensure AI crawlers can access your content. Check your robots.txt allows GPTBot, Google-Extended, Claude-Web, and PerplexityBot. Verify your firewall isn't blocking AI user agents (many WAFs now block them by default). Implement schema markup (Article, FAQPage, Organisation) to help AI understand and attribute your content correctly.
5. Integrate AEO with Your Existing SEO Strategy
Answer Engine Optimisation doesn't replace traditional SEO services—it extends them. The content improvements that help AI citation also improve featured snippet capture and Google rankings. The brand building that increases AI mentions also strengthens E-E-A-T signals. For HubSpot users, Whitehat SEO can configure attribution reporting that tracks AI-referred traffic separately, connecting it to your HubSpot CRM for closed-loop analytics.
Expert Perspectives on the Shift
"Focus on user value over tactical manipulation. Engagement metrics and user satisfaction are becoming as important as traditional ranking signals."
— Danny Sullivan, Google Search Liaison
"The SEO opportunity pie is shrinking. It's still worth having a presence, but the potential upside from SEO investment is smaller than it was three years ago."
— Rand Fishkin, SparkToro Co-founder
"We're seeing a paradigm shift from search engines to answer engines. AI systems like ChatGPT are becoming substitute answer engines that fundamentally change how people find information."
— Alan Antin, Gartner VP Analyst
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SEO dead because of AI?
No, SEO isn't dead—it's evolving. Traditional search still captures the majority of web traffic, and Google remains the dominant search platform with 89.6% market share. However, AI search is growing rapidly and represents a new channel that complements rather than replaces traditional SEO. Companies should optimise for both.
What is Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)?
Answer Engine Optimisation is the practice of structuring content and building authority signals so AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Claude can cite and recommend your brand. Unlike traditional SEO which targets ranking positions, AEO focuses on getting your brand mentioned within AI-generated responses.
How do I measure AI search performance?
Track AI visibility through manual query testing across platforms, monitor referral traffic from AI sources in analytics (look for chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai in referrers), use citation tracking tools where available, and implement attribution reporting to connect AI-referred visits to pipeline. HubSpot users can configure custom tracking for AI traffic sources.
Do backlinks still matter for AI search?
Backlinks have reduced importance for AI citation compared to traditional SEO. Research shows brand mentions and brand search volume correlate more strongly with AI visibility than backlink profiles. However, backlinks still matter for traditional Google rankings, which in turn influence some AI platforms that use Google's index as a data source.
How long does it take to see results from AEO?
Most businesses see initial changes in AI visibility within 4-8 weeks as content restructuring takes effect. Sustainable results from authority building across review platforms and third-party sources typically take 3-6 months. AI systems update their training data and real-time indexes at different rates, so visibility varies by platform.
Should UK businesses prioritise AEO differently than US companies?
UK businesses have a specific advantage: most AI search content is US-centric, creating an opportunity for UK-focused brands to capture local queries with less competition. UK regulatory context (GDPR, ASA guidelines) and market-specific pricing in GBP also differentiate UK content. The CMA's ongoing investigation into Google may also create regulatory changes affecting UK search differently than other markets.
Ready to Optimise Your Brand for AI Search?
Whitehat SEO's AEO service helps B2B companies build visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. As a HubSpot Diamond Partner, we connect AI visibility to pipeline for clear ROI measurement.
Get Your Free AEO AuditReferences
- TechCrunch: Sam Altman says ChatGPT has hit 800M weekly active users (October 2025)
- Ofcom: Online Nation Report (December 2025)
- Forrester: B2B Buyer Adoption of Generative AI (2024)
- Ahrefs: Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google's Top 10 (2025)
- Ahrefs: 86% of Top Mentioned Sources Are Not Shared Across AI Assistants (2025)
- BrightEdge: AI Search Strategies Report (June 2025)
- Gartner: Search Engine Volume Predictions (2024)
About the Author
Clwyd Probert is CEO and Founder of Whitehat SEO, a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner. He leads the world's largest HubSpot User Group (London HUG) and is a guest lecturer at UCL on digital marketing strategy. Whitehat helps B2B companies turn their marketing investment into predictable pipeline through integrated SEO, AEO, and HubSpot optimisation.