New research: AI now shapes 92% of B2B vendor shortlists

What happened?

A Semrush survey of 622 US business professionals, published July 8, 2026, found that 84 percent use AI tools for work and 92 percent say AI has shaped their vendor shortlist during a purchase, with 45 percent calling the effect significant. When someone notices a vendor inside an AI answer, only 7 percent say brand recognition is the reason. The strongest signal was a close match to their specific use case, cited by 53 percent, followed by a clear, detailed description at 50 percent. Being mentioned first or early mattered to only 36 percent of respondents.

Why does it matter?

This is good news for small organizations that assume only the biggest names get chosen. AI powered vendor research does not reward reputation the way traditional search did, it rewards the clearest match to a specific question. A well known competitor loses that edge the moment an AI tool is comparing descriptions instead of names. The same survey found the top complaint, cited by 33 percent, was that AI recommendations felt too generic for the buyer situation, meaning vague, general purpose pages are the ones losing out, not the smaller organizations behind them.

Should I do anything?

Open your most important program or service page and check whether it states, in the first two sentences, exactly who it is for and what specific problem it solves. A page that reads like a general overview will not stand out the way a page that answers one precise question will. Start with your single most visited service page, rewrite its opening to name the exact audience and the exact problem, and leave the rest of the page for later. That match is what this survey found buyers respond to most.

Learn more

• Primary source: Semrush B2B AI buying survey
• Our guide: what makes content citation-worthy
• Our guide: conduct an AI visibility audit