Key points
- SEJ and AirOps analyzed about 380,000 AI-generated answers on 81 enterprise software topics, spread over six AI surfaces, for a 2026 B2B discovery report.
- Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode cite Reddit and YouTube far more often than ChatGPT or Claude, which rarely cite YouTube or social platforms.
- ChatGPT's share of answers citing Reddit roughly halved between July and August, while Google's surfaces kept citing it.
- G2 data cited in the piece says 51% of B2B software buyers now begin research with a chatbot more often than with Google.
Why it matters for marketers: Visibility in Google's AI answers and in standalone chatbots depends on different sources, so one blended score can hide losses and send budget to the wrong channels.
Search Engine Journal, working with AirOps, published findings from its State of B2B AI Discovery 2026 report. The team reviewed roughly 380,000 AI answers on enterprise software topics across six AI surfaces. The central finding is that these surfaces do not cite the same places.
Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode build on live Search results, so they pull in Reddit threads, YouTube videos and LinkedIn posts at a much higher rate. ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude run their own retrieval and lean on vendor pages and review sites. G2 was the one domain that showed up consistently across surfaces. Across all of them, product pages, comparison pages and listicles remained the most cited content.
For marketers, the takeaway is that AI visibility is at least two separate games. A brand can do well in Google's AI answers and barely register in ChatGPT, and a blended score would hide that. The data also shows volatility: ChatGPT's Reddit citation rate dropped sharply from July to August, a swing that monthly reporting could miss.
The author's advice is to start with the pages AI already cites, especially comparison pages, before publishing more blog content. Then add layers based on which tools your buyers use: community, video and LinkedIn for Google-heavy audiences, review profiles for those on ChatGPT or Claude. Category matters too, since review and community citation shares varied widely by software type.
Next steps: ask buyers on sales calls which AI tools they use, check your category's source mix before setting budget, and track citations by surface on a weekly schedule rather than monthly.
Sources
This brief is our own summary. Read the full reporting at the source.