9 in 10 B2B buyers use AI to research vendors. Is your firm in the answer?

We help B2B service companies become the brand that AI recommends when decision-makers ask for options in your category. Not through technical tricks — through the earned authority that AI actually trusts.

Trusted by global brands

AI Search

THE B2B Sales PROBLEM

Your buyers changed how they research. Most B2B firms haven’t caught up.

Problem 01

Your Buyers Ask AI Before They Ask You.

According to Forrester, 9 in 10 B2B buyers have adopted LLMs in their purchasing process. When a procurement manager asks ChatGPT “best consultancy for supply chain optimization,” they get a shortlist. If you’re not on it, the conversation is over before it started.

Problem 02

Top Rank But No Recommendations.

You rank on page one of Google. But ChatGPT recommends your competitor. That’s because AI models don’t mirror search rankings — they evaluate what independent third-party sources say about your firm. Without sufficient authority assets, traditional SEO won’t cut it. 

Problem 03

Your Competitors Are Already Building AI Visibility.

Open ChatGPT and ask for recommendations in your category. See a competitor’s name? They’ve most likely figured out what AI needs to see before recommending a firm. Every week you wait, their citation lead grows harder to close.

Problem 04

Your Expertise and Achievements are Invisible

You have years of experience, strong client relationships, and deep domain knowledge. But if that expertise lives only on your website and in your team’s heads — without third-party validation — AI has no evidence to work with and no reason to recommend you.

Enter Authority GEO

In B2B sales, trust is everything. AI knows that too.

B2B purchasing decisions are high-consideration, multi-stakeholder, and research-intensive. Nobody impulse-purchases a $50K consulting engagement. Buyers research, compare, validate, and shortlist — and AI is increasingly involved at every stage.

 

This is why an authority-first approach matters more in B2B than in any other category. AI models don’t recommend B2B firms based on keyword optimization or structured data alone. They recommend firms they can verify through independent sources — because that’s how human buyers make decisions, and AI is designed to emulate that process.

 

In our research, we found a consistent pattern: the brands AI recommended most frequently were the ones easiest to corroborate. They appeared in editorial coverage, on curated listicles, in consistent review profiles, and across industry directories. Firms that relied solely on their own website — without that distributed third-party footprint — were recommended less often, regardless of their Google position.

AI doesn't guess.

It verifies.

The authority signals AI checks before recommending a B2B firm.

Most B2B firms have some of these. Almost none have all of them structured for AI extraction.

Editorial coverage in the publications your buyers trust.

Your business needs to apear the trade publications, business media, and industry outlets that actually influence purchasing decisions in your vertical. Our research shows that contextually matched coverage (tied to the right geography and category) drives recommendations far more effectively than generic mentions.

Content structured for how AI processes B2B queries.

When a buyer asks AI to recommend a firm, the model works through internal stages: discover possible options, compare them, validate claims, and choose the best fit. Each stage requires a different kind of content asset — and most B2B firms are only covered for one or two stages at best.

Consistent entity signals across every platform.

AI cross-references your firm’s information across Crunchbase, LinkedIn, industry directories, your website, and review platforms. If your Crunchbase says one thing, your LinkedIn says another, and your website tells a third story, the model loses confidence and defaults to a competitor with cleaner signals.

Review presence on the platforms that matter.

Clutch, G2, and Trustpilot are among the most heavily cited sources in AI recommendations for B2B services. A firm with strong review presence will be recommended over a firm with none — regardless of which one is actually better at what they do.

How B2B Buyers Use AI

Four stages. If you’re missing from any of them, you lose.

Stage What the buyer asks AI What AI needs from you
Discover "What are the best firms for X?" Presence in listicles, editorial coverage, and category content that establishes your firm as a known option
Compare "Firm A vs Firm B for my use case" Comparison content, differentiated positioning, and review presence that gives AI clear points of distinction
Validate "Is Firm A reputable? Any red flags?" Reviews, case studies, third-party mentions, and awards that AI can cite as independent proof
Choose "Which firm is best for a company like mine?" Use-case specific content, decision guides, and consistent entity signals that match the buyer's context

OUR B2B APPROACH

The full GEO and PR program, built for B2B.

Organic PR

We secure editorial coverage and listicle inclusions in the publications B2B buyers actually consult — trade media, business press, and industry roundups contextually matched to your geography and category. This is the highest-impact vector for B2B in 2026 period.

Review Stimulation

We build your presence on Clutch, G2, Trustpilot, and industry-specific platforms. For B2B services, review presence is often the single biggest gap between firms that get recommended and firms that don’t. We design ethical review generation systems that produce reviews consistently.

Specialized GEO Content

We create comparison content, category guides, and decision resources structured for AI extraction. When a buyer asks AI to compare your firm against competitors, your content gives the model clear, authoritative information to draw from — positioned in your favor.

Social Chatter

We build visibility on LinkedIn, Reddit, and industry forums where B2B conversations happen. AI models reference these discussions when evaluating credibility. A distributed pattern of consistent public discussion about your firm is worth more than any on-site claim.

In-house Channel Optimization

We ensure your website, directory listings, and profiles are consistent, structured, and machine-retrievable — from structured data and llms.txt deployment to entity consistency across Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and other relevant directories for your industry and geographic region.

Targeted Paid Press Releases

We amplify key milestones — new partnerships, case study results, leadership hires, market expansion — through premium distribution channels that AI models index. Particularly effective for B2B firms with a steady stream of developments worth amplifying.

Get Started

Find out if your brand is AI-ready.

Free Audit

Get a free AI visibility audit assessing your content, technical structures, and more. See exactly where you stand in under 48 hours.

No commitment. No retainer. Just data.

What it includes:

How we work

From invisible to recommended – tailored to B2B services.

Step 01

Discovery

We test your firm across hundreds of prompts B2B buyers actually use — “best consultancy for X,” “firm A vs firm B,” “top provider for…” We map where you appear, where competitors appear instead, and audit your review presence, editorial footprint, and entity consistency.

Step 02

Strategy

Based on the audit, we build a prioritized roadmap. For some B2B firms the biggest gap is review presence. For others it’s editorial coverage or entity inconsistency. The strategy is shaped by your specific findings and vertical — not a generic template.

Step 03

Execution

Simultaneous execution across all relevant vectors. PR campaigns targeting your industry’s key publications. In-house content optimized. New GEO content pieces published. Directories published. Entity signals aligned across platforms.

Step 04

Iteration

Continuous citation tracking across all major AI platforms. Monthly reports showing which prompts trigger your firm, which don’t, and what competitors are doing. Quarterly strategy reviews to adjust priorities based on what’s working and what isn’t.

How we think

Pyramid visualization

Whether you’re a boutique or a mid-market leader, AI visibility follows the same rules.

We work with B2B service firms across verticals and company sizes — from 10-person specialist boutiques to established mid-market leaders. If your business depends on being found and trusted by other businesses, GEO applies to you. Here are some of the firm types we’ve worked with:

  • IT services and managed service providers
  • Management consultancies and advisory firms
  • Marketing, creative, and communications agencies
  • Legal and accounting practices
  • HR, recruitment, and staffing companies
  • Engineering and technical consultancies
  • B2B SaaS and software providers
  • Training, education, and professional development firms

The principle is the same regardless of size or specialty: AI recommends the firms it can verify through independent sources. We build that verification layer.

Case Studies

Real results for real B2B companies.

Case Study 02

Authority building that lasts years.

The context:

A DARPA-incubated startup competing against established players for government and enterprise contracts — in one of the noisiest industries on the internet.

The Outcome:

Years later, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini all recommend this company by name with high confidence — powered by the authority footprint we built.

Thanks to PolyGrowth, our local business is ranked #1 on Google for our most important keywords and has been recommended as the best option on ChatGPT for 2+ years now.

Andreas N. Owner, SmashNStack

We really enjoyed working with the PolyGrowth team. The results were exactly as promised and we look forward to our next project with them.

David Abralava Marketing Director, NMORE GROUP

"We highly recommend Simon and the PolyGrowth team. They were extremely easy to communicate with and provide an exceptional service with great turnaround time. We will continue to use their services long term and would encourage anyone else to do the same."

Stella Clark CEO, Instinct Education

FAQs

Frequently asked questions about GEO for B2B.

According to Forrester, buyers use generative AI fairly evenly throughout the buying process — from initial vendor research to creating RFPs to comparing options to validating decisions. AI is now among buyers’ top sources of self-guided information, and much of this activity happens outside the vendor’s direct view. The speed and convenience AI offers generally outweighs accuracy concerns, meaning buyers often take AI recommendations at face value.

Ranking on Google and being recommended by AI are different things. AI models don’t mirror search rankings — they evaluate distributed third-party evidence: editorial mentions, reviews, listicle inclusions, and entity consistency across directories. A firm can rank #1 on Google and still be absent from AI answers if its third-party footprint is thin. We’ve seen this repeatedly in our research.

ChatGPT dominates with over 80% of AI chatbot market share and 900 million weekly active users. But B2B buyers tend to spread across multiple platforms. Perplexity is disproportionately used by senior decision-makers — 30% of its users hold senior leadership roles and 65% are in high-income white-collar professions. Google's AI Overviews now appear in 25% of all searches, and Claude is gaining significant traction in enterprise environments. We optimize for all of them because B2B buyers don't stick to one platform, and each has different citation behaviors.

Yes — and often more easily than in traditional search. AI models value specificity and verifiability over size. A 15-person consultancy that specializes in supply chain optimization for pharmaceutical companies, with reviews on Clutch and coverage in pharma trade media, can outperform a 500-person generalist firm that has more brand recognition but less specific, verifiable authority in that niche. Specialists win in AI.

We track citation frequency, recommendation positioning, and sentiment across all major AI platforms using prompt-by-prompt monitoring. Monthly reports include competitive benchmarking, trend analysis, and gap identification. We measure what matters: how often AI recommends the brand, in what context, and how that changes over time.

It depends on your starting point. Firms with existing editorial coverage and reviews can see initial citations within weeks on real-time platforms like Perplexity and ChatGPT Browse. Firms starting from zero need 2-3 months to build the foundational authority layer. Category leadership in a specific B2B niche typically takes 6-12 months of sustained effort.

Clutch and G2 are the most heavily referenced by AI models for B2B service recommendations. Trustpilot matters for certain categories. Industry-specific platforms (e.g., Chambers for legal, Gartner Peer Insights for tech) carry weight in their respective verticals. The right mix depends on your industry — our audit identifies exactly which platforms AI references for your specific category.

 Traditional PR focuses on generating coverage for brand awareness and reputation. We do that too — but we also select publications informed by AI citation data, structure placements for AI extraction, build review and entity presence alongside editorial coverage, and track the impact on AI recommendations specifically. The PR work serves a dual purpose: building reputation with humans and building recommendation confidence with AI models.

Get Started

Find out if your brand is AI‑ready.

Get a free AI visibility audit assessing your content, technical structures, and more. See exactly where you stand in under 48 hours.

What it includes:
  • AI citability & visibility score
  • Technical foundations & data review
  • Content & EEAT audit
  • Optimization score for specific platforms
  • Action plan
Request Free Audit

No commitment. No retainer. Just data.