Buyer research has moved. In 2026, 73% of B2B buyers reported using an AI answer engine during vendor evaluation, and brands appearing in the top three cited positions saw around 38% more qualified demo requests than uncited ones. Organisations are now reallocating 15–25% of existing SEO budget toward answer engine optimisation.
What answer engines reward
- Content structured so a specific answer can be extracted cleanly
- Machine-readable markup — FAQPage, Service, Organization, BreadcrumbList
- Entity clarity, so the assistant knows what your organisation actually does
- Answers that stand alone without surrounding page context
A worked example from this site
This is not theoretical for us. The IDS site emits structured data across its service and solution pages, including 73 question-and-answer pairs published as FAQPage markup — content written specifically to be quotable out of context.
Measuring whether it worked
Sources
- AEO trends 2026 — https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/answer-engine-optimization-trends
- AI visibility for B2B in 2026 — https://edenrank.com/blog/what-is-answer-engine-optimization-aeo-for-b2b-in-2026