G2 Reviews Became the Gate Twice Over

Two things happened to B2B review sites, and a review program built for only the first one is now half a program. Sites such as G2 and Capterra now shape software shortlists twice: buyers read them directly, and the AI assistants many buyers now start with draw on them too.

Key takeaways

• In G2's June 2026 survey of 1,038 B2B software decision-makers, review sites (38%) edged out AI chatbots (37%) as the top influence on which vendors make the shortlist.
• In Profound's tracked dataset of 680 million AI citations, G2 accounted for about 1.1% of ChatGPT's citations, roughly level with Forbes.
• Since November 4, 2026, a review submitted through the shared review form of G2, Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp counts toward a product's ratings on each of the four where it's listed.

The first change is that review sites won the research phase. In G2's 2024 buyer survey, 31% of software buyers named public review sites as the source they consulted most when planning a purchase, up from 13% in 2021. Buyers are forming shortlists on G2 and Capterra before anyone in your company knows the evaluation started.

The second is that AI assistants moved into that same research phase, and they read the review sites. In G2's March 2026 survey, 51% of B2B software buyers said they now start research with an AI chatbot more often than with Google, up from 29% about a year earlier. By June, buyers rated review sites (38%) and chatbots (37%) as roughly tied for the biggest influence on which vendors make the shortlist.

Those are G2's own surveys, and G2 has an interest in the answer. The independent citation data points the same way. In Profound's tracked dataset of 680 million AI citations from August 2024 to June 2025, G2 accounted for about 1.1% of ChatGPT's citations, roughly level with Forbes near the top of the list. SE Ranking, studying ChatGPT citations across 129,000 domains, found that domains featured on several review platforms such as G2, Capterra and Trustpilot averaged 4.6 to 6.3 citations, against 1.8 for domains on none of them. That is a correlation, not proof that the profiles caused the difference.

So your review presence now reaches buyers two ways: directly, and through the AI answers many of them start with.

Why do B2B review sites matter more now?

B2B review sites matter more now because the same profile reaches buyers twice: on the comparison pages they read, and in AI answers that cite review sites. A thin or stale profile gives buyers less recent customer feedback to judge you by, and gives AI assistants less to cite. Review profiles have generally been treated as a customer marketing chore: get some reviews, respond to the bad ones, put the badge on the site. That framing is now badly out of date.

When we started rebuilding our website, our web agency told me Clutch, a review site for agencies and other service firms, was one of their main sources of leads, and we had no presence there at all. So I started getting our clients to leave reviews. It didn't take long before it was one of our main sources of leads and traffic, and I had more leads than I had time to act on. That changed what I needed the new website to do: filter, not generate.

This year G2 bought Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp from Gartner, and since November 4 a review submitted through their shared review form counts toward your ratings on every one of the four where you're listed. Gartner kept Peer Insights, whose reviews feed its Voice of the Customer reports, so in enterprise categories that's the second profile to keep current.

What matters most on a G2 profile?

Five things decide whether a G2 profile helps you.

Volume with recency. A profile with forty reviews from two years ago reads as a company that had momentum once. Buyers notice, and G2's own scoring discounts age: a review starts losing weight the day it's posted and settles at about 3% of its original weight after roughly three years. A steady trickle beats a burst followed by silence.

Verified identity. Verification has become a meaningful trust signal. G2 has published more than 106,000 reviews from LinkedIn-verified users since it added LinkedIn verification in February 2025, and a review attached to a verifiable professional identity is harder to dismiss.

Category placement. Being in the right categories determines which comparisons you appear in. G2 places products by their features, so check that you're listed in every category your features qualify for. A comparison you never entered is one you lose.

How you're described. Consistency between your G2 description, your website and third-party coverage matters more than any single phrasing. AI answers draw on many sources at once, and contradictory descriptions give them mixed material to work with.

Detail over score. A 4.4 with substantive reviews describing specific use cases is worth more than a 4.9 built from thin ones. Buyers read the text, and so do the systems summarizing it. G2's scoring also gives more weight to reviews that are filled out thoroughly.

Where this connects to everything else

Customer reviews are earned credibility with a different distribution mechanism. The same principle that makes press coverage persuasive, that someone outside your marketing team said this, is what makes reviews work, and both now feed the same AI systems.

I see the same test in press work. When a client weighed skipping independent benchmarks before a product release, I argued for keeping them. Without them, "twice as fast" is only the company's claim. Reporters can report a company's own claims, but they give them far less weight, and they want an analyst, a customer or a benchmark group behind them. A buyer scanning a review site is looking for the same kind of outside evidence.

In practice, review strategy, customer references and press coverage stop being separate programs. All three run on customers willing to say publicly that your product did something for them, which is also what analysts look for when they check with your customers. A company with customers willing to speak publicly has the raw material for all three. A company without them is fighting on all three fronts with nothing to fight with.

How do you get more G2 reviews without breaking the rules?

You get more G2 reviews by asking every customer at the same milestones, rewarding honesty rather than praise, and answering every review in public.

Ask systematically. Tie the request to milestones every customer reaches, such as go-live or renewal, and ask whether or not the experience went well. G2's rules bar collecting reviews only from customers you expect to be happy.

Never pay for the sentiment. Offering something for an honest review is ordinary, and G2 allows it within limits: incentives are capped at $100, vendors must disclose them to G2, incentivized reviews are labeled, and reviews collected without an incentive count for more in its scores. Tying the reward to a positive review breaks G2's rules. Separately, in the US, the FTC's rule on consumer reviews, in force since October 21, 2024, bans incentives conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment, for the reviews the rule covers.

Respond to everything, especially the critical ones. A well-handled negative review is more persuasive than an absent one, because it demonstrates how you behave when something goes wrong. Do it in public; G2's rules bar vendors from contacting reviewers to pressure them into changing a review.

Check what an AI assistant says about you. Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity what the leading tools in your category are, and whether you appear. Try several prompts a buyer would use. It isn't a clean measure of the review program alone, but it's a quick sample of what your buyers may be seeing. When we track AI visibility, we ask each assistant the questions buyers ask, on a schedule, and record whether the company shows up and how. A mention on its own leaves no click trail, so it can't be traced to a sale. Only the buyers who click through from an AI answer show up as referral traffic you can measure.

Feed reviews back into the rest of the program. A customer who wrote a detailed public review has already cleared the hardest hurdle. That person may be your next case study, reference call or press interview, if they and their employer agree.

Common questions

How important are B2B review sites like G2? Important in two ways. In G2's June 2026 buyer survey, review sites edged out AI chatbots as the top influence on which vendors make a shortlist, 38% to 37%. The chatbots also draw on review sites when they answer: in one study of 680 million AI citations, G2 drew about 1.1% of ChatGPT's citations, roughly level with Forbes.

Do AI assistants use G2 and Capterra? Yes, both, though G2 far more often. In Parse's data on ChatGPT Search and Google AI Mode answers from July to October 2026, G2 pages were cited 17,541 times and Capterra pages 3,799 times, about 4.6 to 1. Review sites were still a small slice of all AI citations in that data, about 1.2%.

Is a Capterra review separate from a G2 review now? Not for new reviews. G2 owns Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp, and since November 4, 2026 a review submitted through their shared review form counts toward a product's ratings on each of the four where it's listed. The full text appears publicly on one of them.

Does G2 pay for reviews? Sometimes. G2 says it occasionally offers incentives, such as gift cards or a donation, as a thank-you for approved reviews, and that eligibility never depends on whether a review is positive or negative. Vendors can offer incentives too, but must disclose them to G2. G2 caps any incentive at $100 and labels incentivized reviews. Tying a reward to a positive review breaks G2's rules. In the US, the FTC separately bans sentiment-conditioned incentives for the consumer reviews its rule covers.

How many G2 reviews do you need? Enough to look credible next to the competitors in your category, with new ones arriving steadily. Both volume and recency count. G2's scoring gives older reviews less weight: a review starts losing weight the day it's posted and settles at about 3% of its original weight after roughly three years. A pile of old reviews also reads to buyers as lost momentum.

Sources

• G2, 2024 Buyer Behavior Report, 2024
• G2, New G2 Research: Half of B2B Software Buyers Now Start Their Research With AI Chatbots, PR Newswire, April 15, 2026
• G2, AI Is Making Software Easier to Find and Harder to Buy, According to New G2 Research, PR Newswire, July 22, 2026
• Profound, AI Platform Citation Patterns: How ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity Source Information, June 5, 2025 (updated August 2025)
• Yulia Deda, How to Optimize for ChatGPT, SE Ranking, November 24, 2025
• Dimitry Apollonsky, G2 vs Capterra: Which Does AI Cite?, Parse, October 6, 2026 (updated October 12, 2026)
• G2, G2 to Acquire Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp from Gartner, PR Newswire, January 29, 2026
• G2, Community Guidelines, accessed November 8, 2026
• G2, Research Scoring Methodologies, accessed November 8, 2026
• Sidharth Yadav, How G2 and Verified on LinkedIn Deliver Five-Star Trust in an AI Era, G2, June 23, 2026
• Federal Trade Commission, Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials, August 14, 2024

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