In the fall, we announced that B2B buyer adoption of generative AI was outpacing expectations, with 89% of buyers using genAI in their buying process. Six months later, B2B providers are starting to see the impact in their metrics and facing urgent questions from their executive teams. After dozens of conversations with providers, agencies, and technology platforms, the zero-click future is becoming clearer — AI-powered search will have a dramatic impact on revenue metrics, but many marketing fundamentals will remain the same or become more important.
What’s The Impact Of Zero-Click Search On Organic Traffic?
While many B2B publishers have seen a dramatic drop in traffic, providers are seeing only a modest decline. The composition of organic traffic is shifting, however. Historically, Google keyword search accounted for well over 90% of organic B2B traffic. We expect to see AI-powered search drive 20% of organic traffic by the end of the year. From a small base, the growth is staggering. This traffic will be higher-quality than keyword traffic, with lower bounce rates, higher engagement, and higher conversion rates. The biggest impact, though, isn’t to organic traffic but to information consumption. Net buyer engagement with B2B purchase information will grow dramatically as buyers realize the power and efficiency of AI-powered search.
What Does Zero-Click Search Mean For My Revenue Engine?
The scariest impact of zero-click search will be the lack of visibility. In the long run, zero-click search will remove barriers to purchase. In the near term, however, more activity will take place off of providers’ websites. Providers will need to evolve the role of their website from a traffic generation and lead harvesting engine to an information syndication engine. Their most important audience will continue to be buyers, but they should expect buyers’ agents (retrieval-augmented search agents from players such as Google, Microsoft, ChatGPT, and Perplexity) to be a close second. With fewer, better-informed prospects coming to their site and converting at higher rates, providers looking to grow will need to reinvest in the fundamentals — developing their reputation among buyers prior to a formal purchasing process.
For an overview of how to engage buyers through AI-powered search, see my new report on Messaging For A Zero-Click World.
