Where B2B Buyers Actually Research Software in 2026 (The G2 Era Is Ending)

Quick Takeaways

• Organic traffic to the big review platforms has collapsed: G2 is down 84.5%, Capterra 89%, and TrustRadius 92% from 2024 to the end of 2025
• The research didn't stop, it moved: 51% of B2B software buyers now start their research in an AI chatbot, up from 29% a year earlier
• Reviews still matter, but as AI source material: 88% of review citations in AI Overviews go to just five review platforms, even as their human traffic evaporates
• The new journey is short: AI-built shortlist, one high-intent visit to your site to validate, decision
• That one visit has to answer pricing, show the product instantly, and confirm what the AI already said, or the buyer moves to the next name on the list

The G2 era of software research is ending. Reviews have never mattered more.

Both of those statements are true at the same time, and the gap between them is where most B2B marketing budgets are currently being wasted. Teams are still optimizing for a buyer who browses review sites, reads ten tabs, and fills out a form. That buyer is disappearing. The buyer who replaced them asks an AI assistant to build the shortlist, visits your site once to validate it, and decides. This post walks through the data on where research actually happens now, what the new journey looks like, and where to invest.

The numbers: review-site traffic has collapsed

For a decade, the software buying journey ran through review platforms. "Check G2" was step one of every evaluation, and vendors built entire demand programs around badges, category grids, and review velocity.

Then the traffic left. According to SE Ranking's analysis of review platforms in AI Overviews, organic traffic from 2024 to the end of 2025 fell 84.5% for G2, 89% for Capterra, and 92% for TrustRadius. These are not seasonal dips. They are the kind of declines that end an era.

It would be easy to read this as "buyers stopped caring about reviews." They didn't. They stopped clicking through to read them, because something else now reads the reviews for them.

Where the research went

The same buyer who used to open G2 now opens a chat window. 51% of B2B software buyers now start their research in an AI chatbot, up from 29% just a year earlier, according to G2's own research from April 2026. ChatGPT holds 63% of that activity. And the influence is real, not cosmetic: 69% of buyers chose a different vendor than they originally planned based on AI guidance, and AI chatbots are now the number one influence on the shortlist.

Read that source again. G2 itself is reporting that half of buyers start somewhere other than G2. When the incumbent publishes the data on its own disruption, the shift is past the debating stage.

We covered the mechanics of this behavior in how B2B buyers use ChatGPT to shortlist vendors. The short version: buyers ask an assistant to define the category, name the credible options, and compare them. The consideration set forms inside the chat, before you ever see a session in your analytics.

The paradox: reviews matter more, review sites less

Here is the twist that makes 2026 confusing. Even as their human traffic evaporates, review platforms dominate what AI systems say about you. The same SE Ranking study found that 88% of review citations in Google's AI Overviews still go to just five review platforms.

So the value chain now looks like this: your customers write reviews on G2, an AI reads those reviews, and the buyer reads the AI's summary. The review still shapes the decision. The review site just no longer gets the visit, and increasingly, neither do you. The AI answers "what do people say about this vendor" without anyone clicking anything.

The practical implication: you cannot abandon review platforms, because they are the raw material AI engines trust for sentiment and social proof. But you should stop valuing them as a traffic channel and start valuing them as a citation source. Review velocity, recency, and specificity now work for you inside someone else's answer, not on someone else's page.

The new buying journey has three steps

Put the pieces together and the 2026 journey looks nothing like the funnel your CRM stages were built for:

1. AI shortlist. The buyer asks an assistant for the best tools in the category for their situation. A handful of vendors get named. Everyone else is invisible.
2. One validation visit. The buyer visits the shortlisted sites, briefly, to confirm what the AI said: does the product do what was claimed, what does it cost, does it look credible.
3. Decision. The buyer picks who to engage, often having already decided who they expect to buy from.

Two Gartner findings frame how that validation visit behaves. 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience, so the visit is not a request to talk to sales. At the same time, 69% of buyers turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights. Buyers arrive with AI-formed opinions they want checked, and they want them checked on their own terms, without booking a meeting three days out. This is the buyer we described in the buyer-led sales playbook: doing the qualifying themselves, on their own schedule.

The old journey gave you many touches: an ad impression, a review-site comparison, a few blog visits, a nurture sequence. The new journey compresses all of that into the AI conversation, which you influence but do not control, and one visit, which you control completely.

Your site gets one high-intent visit. Here is what it must do

If a shortlisted buyer lands on your site once, with questions already formed, three jobs decide whether you survive the cut.

Answer pricing without friction. The AI may have already quoted your pricing, or your competitor's, in the same answer. A "Contact us" wall at this stage reads as evasion. A visible starting price and a clear model (see how Naoma publishes per-demo pricing) lets the buyer confirm fit in seconds.

Show the product instantly. The buyer's core question is "does it actually do what the AI said." Screenshots assert; a demo proves. And the default answer, a "Book a Demo" form that converts around 1-2% of visitors and schedules a call for later in the week, is exactly the rep-gated experience 67% of buyers said they do not want. A live demo the visitor can start immediately converts in the 6-20% range because it meets the validation intent in the moment it exists. If your shortlisted buyer is on your pricing page right now, the strongest move you have is to let them get an AI demo now.

Confirm what the AI said about you. Consistency is credibility. If the assistant described you one way and your homepage says something else, the buyer trusts neither. Your category definition, key claims, and pricing should match across your site, your review profiles, and your comparison pages.

This is not theoretical. UXPressia, a customer journey mapping platform, put a live AI demo behind its demo button and saw roughly 15% of visitors who encountered it start a demo, producing 34 sales-qualified leads into pipeline from 529 demos. The full numbers are in the UXPressia case study. One visit, answered well, is enough.

Where to invest now

The budget question follows directly from the journey. Three investments map to the three places the 2026 buyer actually forms a decision:

What should shrink to fund this: spend aimed at intercepting buyers mid-browse, because there is less mid-browse to intercept. Review-site ad placements, badge-driven landing pages, and long nurture sequences all assume a journey with many low-intent touches. The touches consolidated. Follow the intent.

For the broader picture of how demo expectations shifted alongside research behavior, see the state of B2B SaaS demos in 2026.

The takeaway

The G2 era is ending, but not because reviews stopped working. It is ending because the reading moved: AI assistants now digest the reviews, build the shortlist, and send you one visitor who has mostly decided. Keep feeding the review platforms, because that is what the AI cites. Publish content clear enough to be quoted. And treat the single high-intent visit as the highest-leverage moment in your funnel, because it is: answer pricing plainly, and let the buyer see the product the second they want to.

Your site used to be one stop among ten. Now it is the only stop. Build it for the buyer who arrives ready.

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