TopRank Marketing

According to research from SparkToro and Similarweb 68% of Google searches now end without a click.

Only 27% of Google searches send visitors to the open web.

And according to Rand Fishkin, most marketers are still measuring success as if it's 2015.

On the latest episode of the podcast, host Lee Odden sat down with Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro and co-author with Amanda Natividad of the new book, Zero Click Marketing, to discuss what happens when AI search, social platforms, creators, communities, and answer engines fundamentally change how buyers discover information.

A few standout insights from the conversation:
📌 Traffic can go down while sales go up.
📌 Visibility matters more than clicks when discovery happens across AI, social, search, influencers, podcasts, and communities.
📌 Brand building remains one of the strongest drivers of long-term growth.
📌 You don't need to be everywhere. Focus deeply on the channels where your audience actually pays attention.
📌 Original research, authentic expertise, and unique perspectives become more valuable as AI generates more average content.
📌 AI visibility is not the same thing as business impact.

One of Rand's most important observations:
“You’ve got to get okay with the idea that your reach is now going to be far greater than it was, but your traffic is going to be way lower.”

For B2B marketers, that changes how we think about SEO, content, influencer marketing, audience intelligence, attribution, and what it means to become discoverable in an increasingly fragmented world.

Listen, Watch or Read the full episode to learn how leading B2B marketers can adapt to a future where buyers may never click but still make buying decisions: https://www.toprankmarketing.com/podcast/beyond-b2b-22-rand-fishkin/

Don’t let the SEO vs. AEO tactics debate distract you from the search strategy that actually works:

Become the best answer where buyers are looking.

While AI Overviews, zero-click results and evolving SERPs have changed how visibility is earned, the B2B brands getting results are not abandoning SEO fundamentals, they're evolving them.

A modern search optimization strategy means:

• Researching intent, not just keywords
• Mapping topics to real buyer questions
• Refreshing high-visibility content with updated POVs, stats and CTAs
• Strengthening technical SEO, schema, crawlability and page speed
• Proving experience, expertise, authority and trust
• Building credibility through expert voices, earned media and original research
• Tracking how AI-powered search experiences correlate to awareness, engagement and revenue

The future of search is not SEO or AEO.

It's relevance, authority and usefulness across every discovery surface. It’s about making your content consistently visible, trusted and chosen by buyers, LLMs and search engines.

Read the full post by Nick Nelson for 10 practical ways to elevate your B2B brand’s search performance in today's AI-powered search environment https://www.toprankmarketing.com/blog/expert-seo-tips/

Our 2025 B2B influencer marketing research revealed everything from budgets to best practices and use of AI but 2026 is different.

2025 data showed challenges are consistently finding the right influencers (48%), measuring and reporting results (47%), and managing relationships with influencers (40%) which are important challenges to solve given that 82% of marketers report the most success when using an always-on approach which is relationship dependent.

As for budgets, 2025 data found 72% of the most advanced teams have a dedicated influencer budget they expect to grow which synchs well to a recent prediction from Forrester that 75% of enterprise B2B brands will increase their investments in B2B influencer relations this year.

But what about B2B influence in 2026?

AI has impacted everything from how influencers create content to how audiences discover and interact with that content that are very different than in a year ago.

Commoditization of content has elevated the importance of trust, authenticity and genuinely unique perspectives - all of which are hallmarks of the best influencer marketing programs. The opportunity to create impact with influence in B2B marketing is much greater now.

My firsthand experience is that we are seeing more demand from B2B brands for influencer marketing than ever. I am having conversations with B2B marketers at mid-market and enterprise brands every day and the challenges they're trying to solve have evolved.

I'm pretty sure those challenges are felt by many marketers in the B2B space. Since a rising tide lifts all ships, we're continuing our efforts to bring data to the market about all aspects of B2B influence from strategies to tactics, budgets to operations and certainly the impact of AI on content and the intersection of influence with search and AI discovery.

If your B2B brand is working with B2B influencers and creators, I invite you to take a moment to complete our survey for the 5th B2B Influencer Marketing Research Report for 2026: http://survey26.influencermarketingreport.com/

Your responses will help us continue our efforts to elevate the practice of B2B influence, highlighting what works, what doesn't, where to invest and how to measure results.

What if your most influential B2B marketer isn't on your marketing team?

Too many B2B brands treat influencers as one size fits all. The reality is that influence works more like a team sport. The brands earning the most trust, visibility, and buyer confidence are activating a network of experts, executives, employees, customers, creators, and industry influencers who all contribute to a larger story.

The data is hard to ignore:

📈 75% of enterprise B2B companies are expected to increase influencer relations budgets in 2026. (Forrester)

🎯 48% of B2B marketers say finding the right influencers is their biggest challenge. (TopRank)

🔄 82% of top-performing B2B influencer marketing programs use an always-on approach. (TopRank)

💡 Creative campaigns and unique content are the top ways marketers differentiate influencer programs, cited by 56% and 55% of marketers. (TopRank)

📚 74% of marketers who frequently collaborate with influencers on research-based thought leadership report it as very effective, compared to just 29% of those who don't. (TopRank/Ascend2)

🤖 94% of buyers are now using LLMs, making trusted expert voices and credible third-party validation more important than ever. (6Sense)

The takeaway?

Winning B2B brands aren't asking, "Which influencer should we hire?"

They're asking:

✅ Which experts should play which roles across the buyer journey?
✅ How do we build long-term relationships instead of one-time activations?
✅ How can influencer content strengthen thought leadership, trust, and AI search visibility?

Successful B2B influencer marketing in 2026 is a team sport. The brands building the right team are the ones earning attention, trust, and building decision confidence.

Read the full article by our CEO Lee Odden for the most common questions and answers about B2B influencer marketing in 2026 https://www.toprankmarketing.com/blog/b2b-influence-team-sport/

Your AI content is louder. Is it better? Machines generating content for machines means a loss in brand authenticity, trust, and pipeline impact. Learn a better way in this month's B2B Marketing Insider: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-ai-content-louder-better-toprank-online-marketing-ipowe/

57% of B2B marketers are already using AI for content creation (Ascend2/TopRank) but...
..if every marketer has access to the same AI tools, what actually makes a brand stand out?

We asked 12 of the top social media marketing leaders from B2B brands including Adobe, HPE, Slack, UKG, RTX, Cohesity, Cision, and others to help answer an a timely question:

With AI use accelerating, what role will human creativity play in the future of B2B social media marketing?

The answer was amazingly consistent.

AI can help B2B marketers move faster. It can scale ideas, accelerate workflows, and improve efficiency.

But imagination, emotional intelligence, cultural awareness, editorial judgment, and the instinct to create something genuinely memorable still belong to humans.

As AI-generated content floods social feeds, originality is becoming one of the scarcest and most valuable assets in B2B marketing.

The brands that win won't be the ones producing the most content. They'll be the ones creating content that makes people feel something.

In this article by Lee Odden, top social media leaders from some of the world's most respected B2B brands share their perspective on where AI ends and human creativity begins. And why that distinction matters more than ever.

https://www.toprankmarketing.com/blog/b2b-creativity-ai/

HUGE congratulations to Ryan Leighty on his 5th year anniversary at TopRank Marketing!

Ryan's contributions to our search marketing practice have helped numerous B2B brands elevate the performance of their organic and paid search visibility.

Ryan brings a strategic outlook to search marketing and has a unique ability to adapt and quickly develop new ways to measure all the tools and capabilities that are surfacing in the search marketing industry.

Ryan is also a team player, making sure that both his peers and clients have the information they need to make data-backed decisions when it comes to planning their content or search visibility programs.

Staying on top of what matters and what works in search whether it's Google AI overviews or AI search platforms, is more important than ever. We are grateful for the role that Ryan plays in helping our clients become the best answer wherever customers are searching.

Thank you for all that you do Ryan!

B2B marketers are being told two completely different stories about AI search right now.

One side says SEO is dead. The other says nothing has really changed.

Neither is true.

What's actually happening is more important: Google is evolving search from ranked links to AI-mediated answers, recommendations, summaries, and agents - all of which were announced at Google I/O 2026.

This evolution changes how buyers discover brands and makes the search experience fully "zero click". This shift changes what "visibility" means and most importantly, it changes what content earns trust.

B2B content discovery is fragmented with buyers finding solutions through a mix of:
• Google AI Overviews
• ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot
• Social communities and creator content
• Video, podcasts, newsletters and peer validation
• Multi-channel journeys that rarely begin or end on your website

Search has changed but people who buy B2B solutions are still looking for answers. The B2B brands winning in this environment have evolved from optimizing pages to become the most credible, cited, trusted and discoverable answer wherever buyers are looking.

Our latest article, breaks it down:
• What latest search announcements at Google I/O actually mean for B2B marketers
• Why traditional SEO thinking is isn't enough
• How AI search changes the role of trust, thought leadership and content strategy
• Why "Best Answer Brands" are positioned to outperform in AI-powered discovery AND with the humans looking for answers
• What B2B marketers should focus on now

The future of B2B search is less about chasing rankings and more about building authority systems that AI engines and buyers both trust.

At TopRank Marketing, we've built a framework for navigating these changes called Best Answer Marketing. BAM uses data informed strategy about the questions buyers are asking and what content formats and channels can deliver the experiences that drive visibility, build trust and influence decision confidence - wherever buyers are looking.

Learn about the Google I/O search updates and what B2B marketers should do next: https://www.toprankmarketing.com/blog/ai-search-b2b-marketing/

How Best Answer Marketing Drives Visibility & Trust for AI and Human Discovery

How Best Answer Marketing Drives Visibility & Trust for AI and Human Discovery B2B Buyers: Harder to Reach, Harder to Convince. How Best Answer Marketing Changes That.

Today we're celebrating 9 years with the multi-talented Nick Nelson, Associate Content Director at TopRank Marketing! 🎉

Beyond his skills at providing content marketing strategy optimized for search and AI for some of the biggest brands in the B2B tech world, Nick has been a steady, creative force behind some of our most-read B2B content from a zero-click SEO survival guide to thought leadership pieces on AI, content strategy, CFO alignment, and authentic B2B storytelling.

That's 9 years of showing up with a high level of craftsmanship, focus on quality and results for clients, and thoughtful team-first energy as a leader on our Content Marketing team. We're grateful for Nick and all that he does to make TopRank Marketing the Best Answer in B2B Content Marketing!