For years, many B2B companies relied on Google as a predictable source of new business.
A prospective buyer searched for a solution, found your website, consumed your content, and eventually reached out to your sales team. For software companies, consultants, professional services firms, and other B2B organizations, organic search often became one of the most efficient channels for generating qualified opportunities.
That process is becoming less predictable.
Google began rolling out AI Overviews to U.S. users in May 2024, placing AI-generated answers directly in search results. Instead of visiting multiple websites to research a topic, buyers can now get answers to many of their questions without leaving Google.
For business owners and sales leaders, this change matters because it affects how prospects enter the pipeline.
When fewer buyers visit websites, fewer buyers fill out forms, request demos, download content, or identify themselves as leads. The demand still exists. The challenge is that more of the research process is happening before your company has an opportunity to engage.
This article looks at a real-world example of how that shift impacted lead generation for an enterprise software pricing page and, more importantly, what B2B companies can do to adapt.
One of our clients had a pricing guide for an enterprise software solution that consistently generated leads.
People researching software costs, implementation budgets, licensing options, and project scope would find the page through Google, review the information, and often request additional guidance through a form on the website.
For more than a year, the page was a reliable source of opportunities. In some months it generated more than 100 inquiries. At its peak, it approached 300.
Then the numbers started moving in the wrong direction.
Beginning in the middle of 2024, conversions dropped sharply and continued trending downward. The decline was noticeable enough that it could not be explained away as normal month-to-month fluctuation.
The interesting part is that nothing significant changed on the client side. The offering was the same. The pricing questions buyers were researching were the same. The need for the software did not disappear.
What changed was how buyers accessed information.
As Google expanded AI-generated answers within search results, fewer people needed to visit websites to get answers to common questions. For topics such as software pricing, implementation costs, and vendor comparisons, buyers could often gather enough information to continue their research without clicking through to a company's website.
The chart below illustrates what happened. While every company and industry will be different, the pattern raises an important question for business owners and sales leaders: what happens when one of your most productive lead sources starts producing fewer opportunities even though demand still exists?
Most business owners are not checking Google Analytics every morning. They care about a much simpler question: are enough qualified opportunities entering the pipeline?
For many B2B companies, organic search has historically been one of the most reliable ways to generate those opportunities. A prospective buyer searches for a solution, finds your content, visits your website, and eventually reaches out to sales.
That process is becoming less predictable.
A buyer researching software pricing, implementation costs, ERP comparisons, or CRM alternatives can now get a substantial amount of information directly from Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other AI platforms. Some of those buyers will still visit vendor websites. Others will continue their research without ever identifying themselves.
We've seen this firsthand with clients whose content continued ranking well while lead volume declined. The demand was still there. Prospects were still researching. Fewer of them were making it to a form submission or sales conversation.
That creates a challenge for sales and revenue leaders. If fewer buyers are raising their hands, companies need additional ways to identify interest, stay visible during the research process, and create conversations before a prospect fills out a form.
The organizations adapting successfully are treating search as one part of a broader demand generation strategy rather than the primary source of new opportunities.
The old path looked like this:
A buyer searched Google. They found your article. They clicked. They read. They engaged with a CTA. They filled out a form. Your sales team followed up.
That path still exists, but it is no longer something B2B companies can depend on as heavily as they once did.
The new path is messier.
A buyer might ask Google for pricing. Then ask ChatGPT for vendor comparisons. Then read a Reddit thread. Then watch a YouTube video. Then see a LinkedIn post. Then ask a colleague. Then return to Google with a branded search weeks later.
By the time they land on your website, they may already have formed strong opinions.
Or they may never land on your site at all.
That is the real issue. B2B companies cannot build their entire demand generation strategy around waiting for buyers to click, visit, and convert.
They need ways to identify intent, reach the right accounts, build direct audiences, and create demand outside of traditional organic search.
The answer is not to abandon SEO.
Search still matters. Content still matters. AI visibility matters, alot. Your buyers are still searching, reading, comparing options, and evaluating vendors.
But SEO cannot carry the demand generation burden on its own anymore.
B2B companies need a more resilient growth engine—one that does not rely solely on Google sending visitors to a website before a lead can be created.
That shift starts with five areas.
Many buyers are still researching solutions. They're just identifying themselves later in the process.
That makes website activity, email engagement, webinar attendance, and interactions with pricing, comparison, and implementation content much more valuable than they were a few years ago.
Tools such as ZoomInfo WebSights, Leadfeeder, RB2B, and G2 Buyer Intent can help identify companies engaging with high-intent content on your website. Several of our clients use these signals to trigger outbound activity from SDRs and BDRs rather than waiting for a form submission.
For example, if a target account visits a pricing page or software comparison guide multiple times, sales can begin outreach while research is actively taking place. In many cases, that conversation happens weeks before a traditional inbound lead would have appeared.
First-party intent tells you who is engaging with your assets on your website.
Third-party intent helps you find companies researching relevant topics across the broader web.
This matters because many buyers may now be doing more research without touching your website at all.
Platforms such as ZoomInfo, 6sense, Bombora, Demandbase, and similar tools can help identify companies showing elevated research activity around relevant topics above and beyond what they normally would.
A company in your target market (ICP) may always be somewhat relevant. But a company showing a sudden increase in research around your particular product or service may be entering into an active buying window.
That is when an outbound motion becomes much more successful.
Instead of cold outreach based only on ICP, your team can prioritize accounts showing signs of online research. The message can be more relevant. The timing can be better. The content can align with what the account appears to care about.
One of the risks many B2B companies are facing right now is that too much of their demand generation depends on platforms they do not control.
Google can change its search experience. AI platforms can change how answers are presented. Social networks can change algorithms and organic reach. Those decisions can have a direct impact on traffic and lead generation.
An owned audience gives you a way to stay connected with prospects regardless of what happens on those platforms.
For many companies, that audience includes newsletter subscribers, customers, prospects, webinar attendees, and contacts that fit their ideal customer profile. These are people who have already shown some level of interest in your company, your expertise, or the problems you help solve.
Email newsletters remain one of the most practical ways to maintain those relationships over long sales cycles. A prospect may not be evaluating solutions today, but consistent exposure to your content can keep your company top of mind when priorities change six months from now.
We often use tools such as Rasa.io to help clients distribute relevant content to their audience and HubSpot to track engagement across contacts and accounts. That engagement data becomes useful beyond marketing. If a prospect regularly engages with content around a specific topic, sales has additional context for outreach and account prioritization.
Companies with a strong owned audience are less dependent on search traffic for visibility. They have a direct channel for sharing insights, promoting events, highlighting customer success stories, and staying in front of the market on a consistent basis.
Paid advertising can help offset some of the visibility lost to AI answers, particularly for high-intent searches where buyers are actively evaluating solutions.
Google Search Ads remain valuable because people are still searching for pricing, implementation services, software comparisons, and vendor alternatives. For many B2B companies, these searches represent some of the highest-intent opportunities available.
Display advertising and retargeting can also support longer buying cycles. A prospect may visit your website once, continue researching elsewhere, and not return for weeks or months. Retargeting keeps your company visible while that evaluation process continues. For account-based marketing programs, display advertising can reinforce outreach efforts and help build familiarity with target accounts before a conversation takes place.
One caution: paid advertising is rarely a channel where underfunded programs produce meaningful results.
Many of the companies we see struggle with paid media are operating with very small budgets and expecting quick wins within a few months. In competitive B2B markets, that often is not enough time or budget to gather meaningful data, refine campaigns, test messaging, and build pipeline.
The companies generating consistent results from paid search and paid social typically view these programs as long-term investments. They commit sufficient budget to compete effectively, understand that optimization takes time, and are willing to stay with the channel long enough to improve performance over multiple quarters and years.
Paid advertising can absolutely generate opportunities, but it works best when it is treated as an ongoing demand generation program rather than a short-term experiment.
B2B buyers are learning from more places than Google.
They are reading LinkedIn posts, watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, joining webinars, browsing Reddit threads, and asking peers for recommendations. Some of that research never shows up in your website analytics.
If your prospects spend time in those channels, your company needs a visible presence there.
For many B2B companies, LinkedIn is the most practical starting point. A steady presence from company leaders, subject matter experts, and salespeople can help prospects understand how you think, what problems you solve, and where you have experience.
This matters in categories with long sales cycles and higher trust requirements. Enterprise software, consulting, implementation services, and complex B2B solutions are rarely evaluated from one search visit. Buyers want to see evidence that you understand their industry, their risks, and the practical details of the work.
Social visibility helps create that familiarity before a prospect is ready for a sales conversation.
The right channel depends on where your buyers spend time. For some companies, that may be LinkedIn. For others, YouTube, podcasts, webinars, or niche communities may be more useful.
The practical point is simple: if Google sends fewer visitors and AI answers absorb more informational searches, your brand needs other places where prospects can encounter your expertise.
The enterprise software pricing page featured in this article did not stop converting because the content became outdated or buyers lost interest in the topic.
The way people research changed.
A growing share of that research now happens inside Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, peer communities, and other channels that sit outside the traditional organic search journey.
For B2B marketers, that creates a practical challenge. Rankings, clicks, and website sessions provide only part of the picture. Many buying journeys now begin elsewhere and may involve multiple platforms before a prospect ever visits your website.
Companies that continue relying primarily on organic search traffic will likely find it harder to maintain the same level of lead generation they experienced in the past. The organizations seeing the best results are building multiple paths to demand. They are using first-party intent data to identify interested accounts, leveraging third-party intent signals to find buyers earlier, growing owned audiences through newsletters and events, investing in paid media where it makes sense, and maintaining visibility on the channels where their prospects spend time.
None of these tactics replaces SEO. Search remains an important source of visibility and demand.
What has changed is the level of dependence companies can afford to place on any single channel.
The businesses that navigate this shift successfully will be the ones that diversify how they attract attention, identify buying signals, and create sales conversations. That approach is generally more resilient than relying on traffic from a single platform, regardless of how search evolves over the next few years.