B2B Marketing - The impact of AI on search

Last week I attended B2B Marketing Live UK. Some of the insights really hit home how fundamentally the game is changing.

My time was jam-packed with sessions, listening and speaking to experts at the forefront of the latest innovations in marketing, exploring uncharted territory to figure out what this rapidly evolving landscape means for B2B brands.

A recurring theme was the impact of AI on search.

It is changing the game entirely. Website traffic is down and is unlikely to come back. Around 89% of B2B buyers now use generative AI as a key source of information during their buying process (Forrester).

Not only are we relying more and more on AI recommendations, but Google AI overviews are intercepting potential web traffic, providing more personalised and contextualised answers, without the need to click through to the source.

What does this mean?

Web traffic is in decline, but conversion rates appear to be increasing, particularly for those who are providing ungated AI optimised information through their website for the LLMs to ingest and cite in their answers. Users trust AI recommendations more than websites, so AI originated traffic converts higher.

Now the race is on to feed the machine, to become the answer inside the AI tools.

When you also factor in that recent analysis suggests that more than half of all newly created content online is now AI generated or assisted, it’s clear that both the creator and consumer are increasingly going to be AI.

That’s a radical reshaping of the online world.