THE SIGNAL DROP

92% of B2B buyers say AI shaped their vendor shortlist and 83% say it swayed the final decision (Semrush, 622 US professionals)Semrush

Generative AI is now the single most meaningful information source for B2B purchase decisions, ahead of vendor sites and sales (Forrester, 18,000 buyers)Forrester

51% of B2B software buyers now start their research inside an AI chatbot rather than a search engineG2 / Demand Gen Report

When AI builds the shortlist, buyers rank use-case fit (53%) and clear descriptions (50%) far above brand recognition (7%)Semrush

48% of marketers admit they often guess which activities drive purchasing; 84% call buying-journey visibility a top-12-month priority (Madison Logic / Harris Poll, 300+ decision-makers)Madison Logic / Harris Poll ↗

Google Search Console now reports Search and Discover performance for Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube content — its first off-property 'platform properties'Google Search Central

The new Search Console platform reports show clicks, impressions and position only — Google Search traffic, not native platform reach; rolling out over the coming weeksSemrush

From Aug 2, 2026 the EU AI Act (Article 50) requires AI-generated content to be marked machine-readable; systems already live get until Dec 2 to complyEU AI Act

84-91% of consumers say AI-generated content should be disclosed; ~39% trust a brand less for heavy undisclosed AI use, double 2025's 20%Fractl / Search Engine Land

Atlan rebuilt 52 pages around E-E-A-T and took 35% of AI citations in its category (1.6x the runner-up), appearing in 58.9% of answers across five LLMsFoundation Inc

First-hand: a B2B team says following the AEO 'playbook' alone didn't get them cited by ChatGPT — original data and named expertise finally didr/b2bmarketing ↗

Ahrefs breaks down how AI answers actually pick sources: retrieval (RAG) ranks passages on relevance and structure before citingAhrefs

OpenAI shipped GPT-5.6 to general availability and made it the preferred model in Microsoft 365 Copilot — the writing-tool layer under content teams shifts againOpenAI ↗

Instagram head Adam Mosseri argues AI is 'a tailwind for authenticity' — as AI content floods feeds, provably human voices stand outLenny's Newsletter ↗

Both engines' first-party AI-visibility reports (Google GSC Gen AI + Bing Citation Share) are still impressions-only — no fresh clicks or citation-share this weekGoogle / Microsoft

No fresh AI-Overview CTR dataset this week; Seer's 1.3% to 2.4% rebound remains the latest read — the next Seer update is the one to watchSeer Interactive (standing)