DEV Community: Peter Jackman

Half of B2B Software Buyers Now Start Vendor Research in an AI Chatbot: What That Actually Says, and What It Changes

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:59:57 +0000

There is a statistic doing the rounds in B2B decks right now: "51% of B2B software buyers begin vendor research in an AI chatbot, up from 29% in April 2025." It is being quoted as if half of all software buying journeys now open in ChatGPT instead of Google. We traced the figure to its owner, and that is not quite what the owner's page says. This post covers what G2 actually measured, where the wo

What this covers

What the owner's page actually says
The part that should actually worry you
Classic funnel vs chatbot-first discovery
What a B2B sales and marketing team should change
1. Treat AI visibility as a channel, not a curiosity

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *Half of B2B Software Buyers Now Start Vendor Research in an AI Chatbot: What That Actually Says, and What It Changes*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

Multi-Format AEO: Getting AI Engines to Cite Your Video, Audio and Transcripts

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:59:09 +0000

Every 2026 AEO trend roundup says roughly the same thing: content is going multi-format, and your videos, podcasts and webinars are the next citation surface. The audience half of that claim is measurable and true — the numbers are below. The engine half is where the roundups get vague, because what OpenAI, Google and Perplexity actually publish about their own crawlers tells a less exciting, more

What this covers

What OpenAI, Google and Perplexity actually document
OpenAI: crawler docs describe pages, not media
Google: metadata first, and a capable model is not a crawling promise
Perplexity: search surfacing, nothing on formats
Why the transcript is the citable layer

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *Multi-Format AEO: Getting AI Engines to Cite Your Video, Audio and Transcripts*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

The AI Crawler Allowlist: robots.txt Decisions for B2B SaaS in 2026

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:58:20 +0000

Somewhere in the last two years, a security checklist probably told you to block AI crawlers in robots.txt. For a B2B SaaS company in 2026, that advice can quietly cost you the channel where buyers now do their research — because the same AI company typically operates one crawler that feeds model training and a different one that decides whether you appear in the answers a buyer reads. This post i

What this covers

One company, several bots — and only some of them matter to revenue
Who actually commits to honouring robots.txt
The trade-off the checklist missed
A decision matrix by site type and goal
A copy-paste allowlist for the common SaaS case

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *The AI Crawler Allowlist: robots.txt Decisions for B2B SaaS in 2026*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

Which AI Crawlers Actually Matter: Training Bots vs On-Demand Fetchers

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:57:32 +0000

Open a server log on any B2B site in 2026 and you will find a crowd of user agents with AI-sounding names: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, meta-externalagent, Amazonbot, Bytespider. Most teams treat them as one blob called "AI bots" and either block the lot or ignore the lot. Both reactions miss the point, because these crawlers do two completely different jobs — and only one involves a potentia

What this covers

Why the split matters to a revenue team
The training crawlers: feeding a future model
The on-demand crawlers: a buyer may be on the other end
Search indexers — they decide whether you're findable
User-triggered fetchers — someone is reading you right now

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *Which AI Crawlers Actually Matter: Training Bots vs On-Demand Fetchers*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

When You're Not on G2: Earning AI Citations Without a Review-Site Profile

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:56:43 +0000

Nearly every answer engine optimisation playbook for SaaS opens the same way: claim your G2 profile, complete it, run a steady review-generation motion. Our own piece on citation-source concentration called review platforms "the highest-leverage surface you directly control" — advice that holds if you have a shipped product and customers to review it.

What this covers

First, the claim doing the rounds — and where it falls apart
The review-site gate is real: G2 excludes beta products by policy
Review-site alternatives that are open pre-launch
The six citation surfaces that remain — and how they compare
Comparison: citation surfaces open without a review profile

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *When You're Not on G2: Earning AI Citations Without a Review-Site Profile*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

Local Pages for AI Visibility: Do Geographic Pages Win AI Citations in 2026?

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:55:55 +0000

Every few months a tactic from classic SEO gets rebadged for the AI-search era, and in 2026 it is the local page. HubSpot's answer-engine-optimisation trends piece puts "use local pages to your advantage" at the top of its list, and agencies have started pitching country-page programmes as an AEO deliverable. Before anyone commissions forty city pages, two things being blurred need separating: the

What this covers

What HubSpot's trends piece actually says
How AI engines localise answers — what the owners document
ChatGPT: IP-based location and query rewriting
Gemini: documented for the consumer apps, not for API grounding
The doorway trap: Google wrote the policy for exactly this

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *Local Pages for AI Visibility: Do Geographic Pages Win AI Citations in 2026?*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

Front-Loading for AI Citation: Where on the Page AI Engines Actually Quote From

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:55:07 +0000

At a glance: AI engines quote from positions on a page, not from pages as wholes — and the measurable bias is toward the top. The most-circulated figure, that 55% of sampled Google AI Overview citations came from the first 30% of the cited page, traces to a 100-citation analysis published by CXL in March 2026: a small, single-engine sample, but directionally consistent with the rest of the public

What this covers

The circulating claim — and who actually ran the sample
Why position matters: what the engine owners actually document
Why front-loading works (and what it actually means)
The restructure guide: before and after
FAQ: page position and AI citations

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *Front-Loading for AI Citation: Where on the Page AI Engines Actually Quote From*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

AI Agents and the Australian Privacy Act Review: What Outbound Teams Should Prepare For

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:54:18 +0000

Australia's privacy overhaul is not one event — it is a staged program, and teams treating it as a single future deadline are already behind on the parts that are law today. The Privacy Act Review produced 116 reform proposals; the first tranche was legislated in December 2024 and commences in pieces, while the second tranche — the one aimed squarely at direct marketing — is still being drafted. I

What this covers

Where the reform actually stands in August 2026
Already in force: the statutory tort is the sleeper risk for outbound
The hard deadline: ADM transparency by 10 December 2026
Tranche 2: the direct-marketing reforms outbound teams should watch
A preparation plan that survives the uncertainty

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *AI Agents and the Australian Privacy Act Review: What Outbound Teams Should Prepare For*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

llms.txt in 2026: Does Any AI Engine Actually Read It?

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:53:30 +0000

At a glance: No major AI engine — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Perplexity — has ever documented consuming llms.txt from third-party websites; their crawler docs name exactly one control file, robots.txt. Confusingly, several of those companies publish llms.txt for their own docs, and Chrome's Lighthouse now audits your site for one. Serving the file is cheap, but treat claims that it drives AI cit

What this covers

What llms.txt actually is — a proposal, not a standard
Producing is not consuming
What John Mueller actually said (and where)
The Lighthouse wrinkle: Google's products don't agree with each other
What each owner actually documents

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *llms.txt in 2026: Does Any AI Engine Actually Read It?*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

The Do Not Call Register and AI Voice Agents: What ACMA Enforcement Actually Looks Like

Peter Jackman — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:52:41 +0000

Vendor blogs love to imply that AI voice agents occupy some regulatory grey zone in Australia. They don't. The Do Not Call Register Act 2006 (Cth) defines a "voice call" to include "a call that involves a recorded or synthetic voice" — words that predate anyone strapping a large language model to a SIP trunk. An AI agent making outbound sales calls to Australian numbers is a telemarketer, full sto

What this covers

The synthetic-voice clause: why an AI agent is a telemarketer
What the Do Not Call Register Act mechanically requires
The Industry Standard: hours, identification, termination, caller ID
What enforcement actually looks like: two ACMA actions
V Marketing (Federal Court, March 2025) — the case vendor blogs half-remember

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *The Do Not Call Register and AI Voice Agents: What ACMA Enforcement Actually Looks Like*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

The US State AI Call-Disclosure Patchwork: What Texas SB 140 Actually Says, and Which States Really Require Disclosure

Peter Jackman — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:33:59 +0000

If you run AI voice or chat outreach into the United States, the compliance question you keep getting asked — "do we legally have to say it's an AI?" — has no single federal answer. The FCC proposed one in August 2024 and has not adopted it. So the operative disclosure rules are state rules, and they are a genuine patchwork: different triggers, different wording, different timing, different enforc

What this covers

The federal layer: consent rules, not disclosure rules
The verified state map
What Texas SB 140 actually does
Where the map has holes
What to actually implement

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *The US State AI Call-Disclosure Patchwork: What Texas SB 140 Actually Says, and Which States Really Require Disclosure*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.

Inbound AI Callers: Preparing Your Phone Lines for Consumer Agents That Ring Your Business

Peter Jackman — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:33:10 +0000

Almost everything written about AI on the phone assumes the machine is on the outbound side: your agent, your dialler, your list. The flip side is already live and barely discussed. Consumer-side assistants now ring businesses on a person's behalf to check a price, confirm stock or book a slot. The call arrives on your main line, in business hours, sounding like a polite customer. It is not one.

What this covers

What is confirmed, and what is not
Human caller versus consumer AI caller
When their agent calls your agent
Does an AI caller have to say it is an AI?
The inbound readiness checklist

This is a technical summary. The full guide — with the tables and worked examples — is on our site: *Inbound AI Callers: Preparing Your Phone Lines for Consumer Agents That Ring Your Business*.

Zian AI is an autonomous AI sales-agent platform (phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp) currently in waitlist beta.