Half of Software Buyers Now Start in ChatGPT. Is Your Product in the Answer?

There is a number every software marketer should sit with: according to G2’s research, about half of B2B software buyers now begin their research with AI chatbots rather than a search engine or a vendor site. 

Half. That means a coin-flip share of your future customers are forming their first impressions of your category, and their initial shortlist, inside a conversation with an AI you may have never optimized for. 

If your product is not in that answer, you are not in the running for those buyers, no matter how strong your website or your ads. This guide is about whether your product is in the answer, and what to do if it is not.

This is written for software and SaaS marketers who need to understand what the shift to AI-first buying means for them specifically. It covers what the data actually shows, what it means to be “in the answer,” why most products are missing from it, how to check your own product in minutes, and how to get in. 

The tone is direct because the situation is: a large share of buying now starts in a place most brands have ignored, and the ones that move first are quietly winning shortlists their competitors never see. Here is how to find out where you stand.

Half of software buyers now start in AI

The headline finding is stark and well-sourced: a large share of B2B software buyers now begin their research not on Google or a vendor site, but in an AI chatbot. This is not a fringe behavior or a future prediction; it is how a big portion of buying already starts today.

What G2’s data shows

The number comes from credible industry research. G2’s Answer Economy research found that about half of B2B software buyers now start their research with AI chatbots, a shift the firm describes as the arrival of an “answer economy” where the AI response, not the search results page, is the first touchpoint. 

This is one of the clearest signals yet that software discovery has fundamentally moved. When half of buyers begin in a chatbot, the chatbot’s answer becomes the new top of your funnel, whether or not you have planned for it. 

What makes the figure so significant is that it is not a projection of where things might go; it is a measurement of where buyers already are. Marketing teams that are still treating AI search as an emerging channel to watch are describing something that has, for half their market, already happened. 

The gap between how buyers behave and how most software marketing is planned has rarely been wider, and that gap is where deals are quietly being won and lost.

The buying journey now starts in the answer

This reorders the entire funnel. A buyer who starts by asking ChatGPT which tools solve their problem gets a shortlist and a set of impressions before visiting anyone’s website, so the answer forms their consideration set upstream of everything you traditionally optimize. 

The old model, where buyers found you through search or ads and then evaluated you on your site, still exists, but a growing half of the market now runs a step earlier, inside the AI. The brands in that first answer shape the deal; the ones absent from it are evaluating for a shortlist they were never on.

Quick verdict: About half of B2B software buyers now start their research in AI chatbots, per G2’s research, which makes the AI answer the new top of your funnel.

Being “in the answer” means the model names and recommends your product when buyers ask, and most products are absent because they were never optimized for it.

You can test your own product in minutes, and getting in is a learnable discipline of category clarity, corroboration, and extractable presence.

What does it mean to be “in the answer”?

Being “in the answer” means that when a buyer asks an AI assistant about your category, your problem, or the best tools for their situation, the model names, describes, and recommends your product. It is the AI-era equivalent of ranking on page one, except the answer often replaces the click entirely.

Concretely, it means being cited and recommended by the assistant. When tools like ChatGPT search answer a software question, they draw on what they know and can retrieve, then name specific products with reasons. 

Being in the answer means yours is one of them, described accurately, for the right use case. Being absent means the buyer’s shortlist forms without you, and since they often act on that shortlist without further searching, absence is not a minor visibility gap; it is a structural exclusion from half the market’s first move. It helps to picture the moment from the buyer’s side. 

They describe their situation in plain language, the model returns three or four tools with a sentence on each, and they start there, often booking demos with the named options and never seeing the rest of the field. 

There is no page two to scroll to and no ads to skip past. The answer is the shortlist, compressed into a single response, which is exactly why presence in it carries so much more weight than a ranking ever did.

Want to know if your product is actually in the answer? Run a free AI visibility audit and get a clear read on where AI names your product, where it names competitors, and how accurately you are described.

Why most software products are missing from the answer

Most products are missing from AI answers for a simple reason: they were built and marketed for a world of search rankings and ad clicks, not for being extracted and recommended by a model. The work that earns a spot in the answer is different from the work that earned a spot on page one, and most brands have not done it yet.

The encouraging part is that absence is not about being too small. A Semrush survey found brand recognition sways just 7% of AI-assisted buyers, so a big brand is not automatically in the answer and a challenger is not automatically out. 

What decides it is whether the model can clearly place your product in a category, verify it through trusted sources, and match it to a need, which is the discipline of generative engine optimization. 

Most products are missing simply because no one has built those signals, which means the gap is an opportunity for whoever moves first, not a permanent disadvantage. This is genuinely different from the search era, where the biggest brands with the biggest budgets accumulated compounding advantages that were nearly impossible to displace. 

In the answer, a focused product with clear positioning and strong proof can sit alongside or ahead of an incumbent, because the model is matching the query to evidence, not deferring to whoever spent the most. For a challenger, that is the most level opening software discovery has offered in years, and it does not stay open forever.

Is your product in the answer?

You can find out in minutes by asking the assistants the questions your buyers ask and seeing whether your product appears. This direct test is more honest than any assumption, because it shows you the actual answer a real buyer would get.

Run the real queries yourself. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini for the best tools in your category, for solutions to the specific problem you solve, and for alternatives to your main competitor, then note whether you appear, where you rank, and how accurately you are described. 

Do it across several phrasings, since buyers word things differently. If you show up consistently and correctly, you are in good shape. If you are absent, buried, or described wrong, you have just found a leak at the very top of your funnel, and one your competitors who do appear are quietly benefiting from. 

Pay special attention to accuracy, not just presence. It is common to find that AI names your product but describes it wrong, attaching it to the wrong use case, quoting outdated pricing, or crediting a competitor with a feature you pioneered. 

That kind of error can cost a deal as surely as being left out, because the buyer forms a wrong impression before ever reaching you. Note both the misses and the mistakes, because both are fixable and both are costing you.

How to get your product into the answer

Getting into the answer is a learnable discipline, not luck. It comes down to making your product something a model can clearly categorize, confidently verify, and easily extract, and it works whether you are a market leader or a challenger.

Own your category clearly

Be unmistakable about what your product is and who it is for. State your category, core use cases, and ideal buyer in plain, specific language, so a model can cleanly place you and match you to a query, which is the foundation of answer engine optimization for software. 

Vague, everything-to-everyone positioning is the fastest way to be left out, because a model simply cannot recommend what it cannot cleanly categorize in the first place.

Earn corroboration from trusted sources

Build the outside proof a model trusts. Cultivate genuine reviews, credible mentions, and inclusion in the roundups and comparisons AI reads, because it weighs independent sources far more than your own claims, which is exactly the kind of helpful, corroborated content Google’s AI features reward. A product consistently described as a strong option across many trusted sources is one the model confidently names in its answer.

Be extractable and consistently present

Make your product easy to read and describe. Ensure your content is accessible, answer-first, and consistent everywhere, so a model can extract an accurate description and reason to recommend you, which is what makes you the kind of product recommended by Claude and every assistant. 

Our AI SEO case studies follow software brands making exactly this move, from absent to named, as they build category clarity, corroboration, and extractable presence together. 

These three moves reinforce one another, which is why they work best in combination. Clear category positioning tells the model where you belong, corroboration tells it you are credible, and extractable content gives it something clean to quote. 

A product that nails one but neglects the others tends to appear inconsistently, named for some phrasings and missed for others. Building all three together is what turns an occasional mention into a reliable spot in the answer.

What this means for your marketing budget

If half of buyers now start in AI, your budget probably does not yet reflect it. Most software marketing spend still flows to channels built for the search-and-click funnel, while the new first step, the AI answer, often gets nothing. That mismatch is the real risk the data exposes.

The implication is not to abandon what works, but to reallocate toward where buying now begins. As AI summaries reduce clicks and fewer than a third of searches send any click, spending that assumes clicks will keep flowing is quietly losing efficiency, while spending on AI visibility reaches buyers at a step competitors are ignoring. 

You do not need to make a dramatic cut to start; even a small, deliberate slice of budget aimed at answer presence, and measured honestly, will tell you quickly whether the channel is working for your category. 

Treating AI answer presence as a real channel with real budget, rather than an optional experiment, is how you match your investment to how buyers actually behave today. The brands that reallocate early buy their answer-visibility cheaply, before the category wakes up and the cost of getting in rises to displace an entrenched incumbent.

Getting help getting into the answer

You can do this yourself if someone can own your category positioning, build corroboration, and make your content extractable and consistent. Many teams bring in a partner for speed and because being in the answer for a competitive software category is sustained work that rewards doing it right and early.

If you hire, look for a partner that treats AI answer presence as a measurable discipline across positioning, content, and corroboration, and that can show your movement from absent to named. 

Our work across competitive industry solutions is built for exactly this shift, and software brands that partner with Intelitune get into the answers their buyers now start with, while competitors are still optimizing for a funnel that begins a step too late.

Being in the answer, or being invisible

The data is not subtle: about half of software buyers now start in AI, so the answer is the new top of your funnel, and being absent from it means being invisible to a coin-flip share of the market at the exact moment they begin. This is not a distant trend to monitor; it is the current shape of how buying starts.

Check whether your product is in the answer today by asking the assistants what your buyers ask. If you are missing, treat it as the urgent, fixable leak it is: own your category, earn corroboration, become extractable, and move budget to match where buying begins. Do that, and you stop being invisible at the start of the deal and start being the product half the market sees first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do half of software buyers really start in ChatGPT?

According to G2’s Answer Economy research, about half of B2B software buyers now start their research with AI chatbots, of which ChatGPT is the most widely used. It reflects a genuine shift in how software discovery begins, with the AI answer replacing the search results page as the first touchpoint. When half of buyers start in a chatbot, that answer becomes the effective top of your marketing funnel.

What does it mean for my product to be “in the answer”?

It means that when a buyer asks an AI assistant about your category or problem, the model names, describes, and recommends your product accurately, for the right use case. It is the AI-era equivalent of ranking on page one, except the answer often replaces the click. Being absent means the buyer’s shortlist forms without you, which excludes you from a growing share of the market’s first move.

Why isn’t my software showing up in AI answers?

Usually because it was marketed for search rankings and ad clicks, not for being extracted and recommended by a model. AI needs to clearly categorize your product, verify it through trusted sources, and match it to a need. Most products have not built those signals yet. It is rarely about being too small, since AI weighs relevance and evidence far more than brand size.

How do I check if my product is in AI answers?

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini the real questions your buyers ask: the best tools in your category, solutions to your problem, and alternatives to your main competitor. Note whether you appear, where you rank, and how accurately you are described, across several phrasings. If you are absent, buried, or described wrong, you have found a leak at the top of your funnel that competitors who appear are benefiting from.

How do I get my product into AI answers?

Own your category with clear, specific positioning, earn corroboration through genuine reviews and credible mentions, and make your content extractable and consistent so a model can accurately describe and recommend you. These signals let AI confidently place, verify, and match your product to buyer queries. It is a learnable discipline that works for challengers and leaders alike, since AI rewards relevance and evidence over brand size.

Resources & Further Reading

The following authoritative sources were used to inform and validate this article:

1. G2 research found about half of B2B software buyers now start their research with AI chatbots.
2. Semrush surveyed B2B professionals on how AI weighs evidence versus brand in recommendations.
3. OpenAI documents how ChatGPT search browses and cites sources when answering.
4. Google Search Central documents AI features and how content appears in AI answers.
5. Pew Research Center found users click links far less often when a Google AI summary appears.
6. SparkToro published 2026 data showing fewer than a third of Google searches send a click.