AI search is changing how enterprise buyers find vendors

September 22, 2026

A prospective customer can learn about a problem, compare approaches and form an impression of a supplier before the supplier sees a website visit. The July and September US marketing roundtable summaries describe teams investigating that possibility through AI search, referral measurement and changes to the way they make content available.

For vendors, this creates two related questions. How should you present your own expertise when some research takes place through AI interfaces? And, if you sell search, content or analytics services, what can you credibly promise a marketing buyer who wants to understand that discovery process?

The evidence is exploratory. Participants discussed answer engine optimisation, or AEO, and generative engine optimisation, or GEO, alongside conventional search work. They raised practical questions about content access, measurement and investment. The summaries do not establish how much enterprise vendor selection happens through AI, or prove that AI referrals convert better than other traffic. A credible proposition should preserve those limits while addressing the work buyers are already considering.

What AEO and GEO mean for this buying conversation

In the roundtables, AEO and GEO describe efforts to make an organisation’s information useful and visible within AI-mediated discovery. The discussions connect that work with conversational questions, clear content and the ability to observe AI referrals. The terminology should help buyers discuss a problem, rather than become a substitute for explaining the actual service.

A vendor should set out what it means by each term in its proposal. Is the engagement concerned with reviewing the information available to buyers, examining technical access, tracking a selected set of questions or analysing referrals? Those activities need different inputs and may involve different teams. Combining them beneath an acronym can obscure the scope.

September’s business impact discussion records work to align content with more conversational searches. July’s business impact discussion also considered structured content, technical foundations and referral tracking. These are useful indications of what buyers were exploring. They are not evidence that a particular format or technical change guarantees inclusion in an AI-generated answer.

For The Leadership Board, the buying implication is a need for clarity about both the work and its limits. A vendor should be able to explain what it will improve directly and what it will observe in systems it does not control. That distinction belongs near the beginning of the sales conversation.

Build around the questions a buyer needs answered

The September discussion of conversational discovery suggests an editorial task: understand the questions that sit behind a prospective customer’s search. For a vendor, those questions should be investigated through its own sales conversations, approved customer material and available buyer research. The roundtables do not supply a universal list for every category.

A recommended starting point is to examine the decisions a buyer must make. What problem does the offer address? Under what conditions is it suitable? What information is needed to assess implementation? Where are the limitations? Clear answers can make the content more useful to a human researcher, irrespective of how that person reaches it.

The same approach should guide comparisons. A page that explains the circumstances in which different approaches make sense offers more decision support than a broad claim of superiority. Vendors should use evidence they can substantiate and avoid manufacturing customer examples to fill a perceived content gap. If a question cannot yet be answered, identify the missing evidence.

This work also creates a more precise brief for an AEO or GEO supplier. Instead of asking to become visible for everything, the buyer can identify the decisions and subjects that matter commercially. The supplier can then propose a bounded evaluation and explain how the selected questions relate to the engagement.

Make useful information available before asking for details

September’s privacy discussion describes a move towards making technical material available without registration. July’s discussion of frictionless experiences records teams reconsidering complex lead capture and using accessible content before later engagement opportunities. These accounts show organisations questioning the relationship between information access and lead generation.

For vendors, the recommendation is to review which information a prospect needs before agreeing to a sales conversation. If implementation requirements or the substance of an approach are difficult to inspect, the buyer may lack enough context to evaluate the offer. A useful review starts with the reader’s task, rather than an assumption that every download must produce a lead.

That does not require a universal decision to remove every form. The source describes particular choices and experiments. An organisation should decide which material can be public, which requires permission and which belongs within a direct commercial discussion. Confidential or customer-specific information should retain the controls it needs.

A vendor selling content or search services should make those decisions visible in the scope. Identify who owns the information, who can approve its release and what the audience will receive. The result should be an intentional information journey, with an appropriate invitation to engage after the reader has received something useful.

Examine the technical foundations without promising a shortcut

The July business impact session discussed technical infrastructure, structured data and content clarity. September’s content session raised a rendering issue as part of work on AI search visibility. The useful evidence is that buyers were encountering technical dependencies alongside editorial ones. The summaries do not provide an independently tested technical recipe.

A supplier should therefore explain how it will investigate the buyer’s own environment. What content is intended to be available? How will access and rendering be checked? Which website team must participate? What findings would lead to a change? These are proposed scoping questions, not a claim that every site has the same defect.

If structured data is part of the proposal, state the specific purpose and validation work. Avoid presenting a special piece of markup as a guaranteed route into an answer. The source records discussion of schema, but it does not substantiate a universal mechanism that determines visibility. Buyers should receive an explanation they can examine with their technical colleagues.

This level of specificity can also prevent a fragmented engagement. Editorial changes, website access and analytics may have different owners. A proposal should identify those dependencies and the order in which work can proceed. Otherwise, the marketing sponsor may buy a service whose recommendations remain unimplemented because another team was never involved.

Separate observed visibility from commercial impact

September’s customer journey discussion included interest in understanding presence within AI answers and using tools to track selected prompts. Its business impact session also noted separate tracking of AI assistant traffic, while leaving unresolved whether that traffic converted better. Those are distinct measurement questions and should remain distinct in a vendor report.

A recommended reporting approach would distinguish observations of answers, identifiable referrals and subsequent commercial actions. An appearance in a monitored response shows what was observed under the recorded conditions. A referral shows a visit that the analytics can identify. An enquiry or sale raises a further attribution question. None of these should silently stand in for all the others.

The buyer should know how the observation set was chosen. Document the questions being monitored and the scope of the exercise, then explain what that scope leaves out. Avoid turning a limited sample into a claim about all potential buyers or every AI search experience. The source does not provide a basis for that extrapolation.

Likewise, a report should distinguish work completed from outcomes observed. Correcting content, implementing approved website changes and establishing a reporting process are deliverables. Visibility and commercial response are observations to evaluate. This distinction gives the sponsor a clearer account of what the supplier has delivered and what remains uncertain.

Respond carefully when website traffic falls

The September summaries contain accounts of reduced visits and downloads, alongside discussion of AI discovery and changing audience behaviour. Participants considered alternative indicators such as enquiries, registrations and citations. Those accounts identify a measurement problem. They do not prove that AI was the sole cause of every traffic change.

Vendors should resist a convenient explanation that cannot be tested. A decline in visits could prompt investigation of the content, the measurement setup and the wider customer journey. The proposal should specify which of those questions the supplier can address. If the evidence cannot isolate a cause, the report should say so.

The same care applies to positive narratives. Information delivered away from the website may contribute to awareness, but the source does not establish how much value that creates for a particular organisation. Treat that as a question to explore through available evidence, rather than a ready-made justification for declining traffic.

This is where a vendor can be useful to a marketing sponsor under pressure to explain performance. Provide a structured account of what is known, what has changed and what further observation could resolve. A clear uncertainty is easier to manage than a confident explanation that cannot support an investment decision.

Use third-party presence with editorial judgement

September’s content and privacy discussions included interest in reputable third-party mentions and sources cited in AI discovery. For vendors, this is a prompt to examine how their expertise is represented beyond their own website. It should not become a claim that any mention, link or placement will produce visibility.

A recommended approach is to identify relevant contexts where the organisation can make a substantiated contribution. The purpose should be to help an audience understand the subject and the vendor’s competence. Any commercial arrangement or permission requirement should be handled appropriately within that activity. The roundtable evidence does not establish a formula for selecting publications or predicting results.

Consistency matters at the level of facts. Review whether descriptions of the offer, its intended audience and its limitations agree across approved material. If the organisation cannot explain its own proposition clearly, asking an external discovery system to represent it accurately introduces an unresolved dependency. This is an editorial recommendation derived from the concern with clear, trusted information.

Vendors offering this work should describe the deliverables precisely. A content contribution, a review of existing descriptions and an observation of citations are different activities. Buyers should be able to see what is included and what evidence will be used to assess the engagement.

Make the investment case specific

September’s business impact discussion included plans to move some resources towards AEO and prepare a case for future search investment. July’s discussion raised difficulty connecting GEO activity with ROI. These contributions show interest in funding the work alongside uncertainty about how to justify it. They do not establish a common budget allocation.

A vendor proposal should begin with the buyer’s particular gap. Perhaps relevant information is inaccessible, the organisation has no view of identifiable AI referrals, or its content does not answer important evaluation questions. State that gap and the work required to address it before presenting a wider transformation programme.

Agree a review that considers both implementation and observation. Has the approved information been made available? Are the intended questions covered accurately? Has the measurement process produced usable evidence? What commercial response can be observed, and with what limitations? These questions give the sponsor a practical basis for deciding what to do next.

The proposal should also address internal ownership. Search work may require content specialists, website owners and analytics colleagues. The source discussions emphasised cross-functional coordination and stakeholder education. Vendors should explain how they will support that coordination, including the decisions the customer must make for the engagement to progress.

What vendors should do with this buyer signal

Review your own discovery material as if a buyer encounters individual answers before reaching the homepage. Can those answers explain the offer accurately and provide enough context to assess it? Are important implementation questions addressed in approved public material? Does the next step give the reader a useful reason to engage?

If you sell AEO, GEO or related services, make your measurement claims as clear as your content recommendations. The roundtables show active interest, experimentation and unanswered questions. A credible supplier can help a buyer make progress within that uncertainty by defining the work, establishing observations and connecting the findings to a commercial decision.

The opportunity is to help enterprise marketing teams understand a changing discovery process without claiming to control it. That requires useful information, practical implementation and an account of results that the sponsor can defend.