Evidencing humanity: how B2B brands get found and chosen in AI search

You don’t need me to tell you that AI is completely changing search.

Every B2B brand wants to know how to appear in AI answers. 

So there are two questions every B2B needs to answer before they start thinking about AI-driven discovery, AI SEO, GEO – whatever you want to call it.

How do we appear in AI summaries?

And once we appear, how do we get chosen by their humans readers?

The answer to both comes down to the same thing: evidence of humanity.

AI and humans are looking for the same trust signals

People are cautious about AI-generated content.

According to Ofcom, 57% of adults who are aware of AI say they’d trust an AI-generated news story less than a human-written one. But trust isn’t just a human problem.

AI systems need trust signals too. They need evidence that a brand knows what it’s talking about. They need credible sources, named people, real experience, clear expertise and proof that the content is grounded in something more substantial than generic marketing copy.

That’s why human input matters. AI needs something credible to work with.

AI answers are still built on human content

Graphite’s analysis of Google Search, ChatGPT with web search and Perplexity shows that the vast majority of AI answers still draw on content with strong human signals.

Across all three platforms, human content makes up most of the cited material. AI-generated content appears too, but it’s not the main source.

That shouldn’t be surprising. The content AI can trust is often the content people can trust: articles with named authors, expert commentary, LinkedIn posts, reviews, case studies, interviews, forums and first-hand experience.

It’s why LinkedIn is becoming a critical platform for AI visibility. LinkedIn’s full of named people sharing opinions, lessons, observations and evidence from their work. It’s not just brand content. It’s people showing what they know. That makes it particularly useful to AI.

None of this is completely new

In plain English, that means Google wants to understand whether content is useful, whether it comes from someone with relevant knowledge, whether the source has credibility and whether people can trust it.

AI search has made those signals even more important. A generic article with no author, no experience and no point of view doesn’t give AI or its users much to work with. A named expert sharing something they’ve actually seen, learned or done does.

Your team’s full of the stories AI and humans want

The good news is that most B2B organisations are already surrounded by the content AI and humans love.

It’s in the questions your clients ask every week. It’s in the mistakes your team sees prospects making. It’s in the lessons from projects. It’s in the conversations your sales team has before a brief is written. It’s in the patterns your account managers notice over time.

To your team, those insights might feel obvious. To your audience and to AI crawlers, those experiences are invaluable.

That’s your opportunity – not to create more content for the sake of it, but to surface the experience that already exists inside your business, and put real people behind it.

Human content works harder everywhere

This isn’t just about visibility in AI search.

Human-driven content has value across the whole marketing mix.

A strong expert article can become LinkedIn content, email content, sales enablement, webinar material, PR commentary and more. A good client story can support search, build credibility and help a prospect feel more confident choosing you. A clear point of view from someone inside the business can do more for trust than another generic guide ever will.

As your competitors start to think they can rely on AI-generated content, there’s never been a more important time to invest in content that draws on the experience of your team and your clients.

AI search is changing how brands are found – but people still choose people.

If you want to understand how visible your brand is in AI search, register for early access to the exceptional™ AI Performance Analyser.