While you were busy putting the finishing touches on your H2 roadmap, AI platforms were reshuffling the leaderboard, getting woven into the enterprise stack, out-browsing every human online, and more.

If we had to boil down Q2 2026 into three core themes, they would be:

1. The model race got more crowded: ChatGPT held its lead, but Gemini and Claude narrowed the gap—reinforcing that a single-platform strategy is a liability.
2. AEO grew up: With Adobe, Sitecore, and HubSpot all making moves—and Google shutting down popular “hacks”—AI search optimization graduated from side experiment to core competence.
3. The agentic web arrived: Zero-click became the go-to and bots out-browsed humans for the first time, confirming that your most important visitor is no longer human.

Here’s what happened in AI search last quarter—and what it means for your strategy.

ChatGPT got some real competition

What happened

ChatGPT is still the market leader in terms of AI platform usage and AI-driven traffic, but the gap is narrowing. OpenAI’s chatbot saw a nearly 17% year-over-year drop in market share in April 2026, all while Gemini and Claude saw upticks in usage.

Gemini appears to be more of a threat on the general-purpose AI search front. Meanwhile, Anthropic is edging out OpenAI on the business user front.

That directly impacts the AI bot traffic websites are receiving—and the human referrals bots pass along. In early April, it was reported that Gemini became the world’s second-largest source of AI chatbot referrals to websites, beating out Perplexity.

What it means

ChatGPT isn’t going away—it’s still the most widely adopted AI platform by a long shot (it also has the most purchase-ready audience). But a single-platform approach to AI search optimization is a liability.

Different AI models can draw from different sources and produce meaningfully different brand narratives. If you’re only focused on one model, you’re only getting a partial picture.

The landscape is fragmenting. Brands need visibility and presence across all of it.

Enterprise players planted their flags

What happened

Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush in late April, officially bringing the latter’s AI Visibility Toolkit into the former’s suite of products. And, not to get too meta (no, not that Meta), Scrunch was acquired by Sitecore in early June.

But acquisitions weren’t the only news.

HubSpot launched its own dedicated AEO product (called, unsurprisingly, HubSpot AEO) in April 2026. Although, that too was based on an acquisition (the product is built on the foundation of XFunnel, acquired in October 2025).

What it means

When companies like Adobe, Sitecore, and HubSpot are making major moves, you know a market has truly arrived. AEO has gone from a new discipline to a core part of the enterprise technology stack. Expect more martech consolidation ahead.

But it’s important not to confuse mergers and acquisitions with product capabilities.

Buying a monitoring dashboard is easy. Everything that comes after—site auditing, content optimization, content delivery—is what ultimately generates results.

Google made waves in its product and the press

What happened

Google had a busy Q2. Right around the time it was rolling out AI Assistant traffic measurement in GA4 (before updating its search box for the first time in a quarter-century and adding generative AI performance reports to Search Console), Google published new guidance on optimizing your website for AI search.

A certain segment of the internet claimed that this proved AEO was just SEO by a different name and that all technologies and agencies focusing on AI search would soon go out of business.

They forgot that Google is only one part of the AI search ecosystem, has earned some skepticism regarding its public pronouncements, and that the data doesn't fit the narrative. For instance, studies have found that Google's top-10 organic results and AI Overview citations only overlap 17-38% of the time.

What it means

Google was right about some things, even if the framing was arguably self-serving. Lots of “AEO hacks” are just gimmicks (e.g., llms.txt, AI slop content, etc.).

Likewise, the technical hygiene of your site is just as important as the content you’re producing (e.g., bot accessibility, semantic HTML).

But saying, “It’s all just SEO” is pretty rich. SEO playbooks are built around keywords, search engine results pages, and a Google crawler that's been relatively stable for 15 years. AI search runs on prompts, agent decision-making, and multiple retrieval pipelines that shift constantly.

Zero-click became the norm

What happened

A wave of research proved what most brands have been feeling for a while now: Zero-click search is the new normal.

One report from SparkToro showed that, over the first four months of 2026, 68% of Google searches ended without a click.

It turns out that when an AI Overview pops up on a Google search (which occurs roughly 20% of the time, according to some researchers—others put it at 42%), click-through rate craters by almost 60%.

What it means

The march toward zero-click is no longer just a trend line—it's increasingly the baseline.

The customer journey now runs through AI summarizing your content for someone who may never see your homepage.

If you’re not already auditing how AI interprets your products and services and taking steps to set the record straight, it’s time to make it a priority.

AI agents out-browsed humans

What happened

The internet hit a momentous milestone in early June: For the first time ever, machines generated more web traffic than people.

You can thank AI search and all the user agents browsing on humans’ behalf.

The question brands have to answer now: How do you make sure your website is built for AI agents, not just the person on the other end of the prompt?

What it means

This is the shift Scrunch has been building for: Your website’s primary visitor isn’t human anymore.

Treating bot traffic as spam to filter out leaves one of your highest-intent signals on the cutting room floor.

Most brands aren’t even measuring this traffic yet, let alone optimizing for it. The opportunity lies in that gap.

Scrunch product launches in Q2 2026

AI platforms weren’t the only ones busy in Q2.

Scrunch was building to help brands talk to their AI search data, shape what AI knows (and says) about them, and keep tabs on shifting sentiment in AI answers, including:

Scrunch MCP

We launched the Scrunch MCP, allowing you to explore and take action on your AI search data conversationally—both in your chatbot of choice and inside Scrunch.

Answer questions, surface insights, manage tools, and more by simply chatting with AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot or Scrunch’s in-app chatbot, Scrunchie.

Knowledge Studio

We launched Knowledge Studio, which lets you turn your internal brand knowledge—from Notion, SharePoint, and beyond—into a living source of truth for AI.

Generate a snapshot of what AI understands about your brand, enrich content for AI, and make sure AI answers are on message.

Sentiment Trends

We launched Sentiment Trends, giving you visibility into how your brand sentiment in AI search changes over time, what’s behind it, and how it compares to industry peers.

Identify the topics and personas driving positive or negative shifts in sentiment, then dig into the prompts behind each shift to reveal what AI is saying and why.

Stay tuned for our Q3 2026 digest.

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