5 reasons you can’t ignore AI for B2B search

For B2B ecommerce, search is no longer a transaction, it’s a conversation. Buyers don’t merely enter the name of a product—they describe the context in which they will use it. With modern digital catalogs with tens of thousands (or even millions) of SKUS, traditional keyword-based search engines are rapidly falling behind. The fact is that buyer search behaviors are evolving too fast for manual tuning processes to manage.

And statistics are proof positive of this trend. In a 2025 survey of B2B companies, 67% of ecommerce professionals reported that “AI search is now a foundational requirement for any B2B ecommerce strategy.” At the same time, the same report noted that only 41% of companies were fully AI operational.

AI is fast proving itself to be a requirement for staying competitive within the fast pace of manufacturing and distribution (M&D) industry. B2B ecommerce search can’t just try to satisfy its customers’ needs. It must anticipate them in a way that’s highly personalized to their past and predicted buying behaviors.

Optimizely Configured Commerce now provides enterprise-grade AI capabilities out of the box via a direct integration with Google Vertex AI Search. Together, they bring enterprise-grade AI capabilities out of the box, enabling real-time learning from every buyer interaction, zero manual index tuning, and instant scalability across massive catalogs—all within a secure, fully hosted environment.

Let’s dive into five compelling reasons why now is the time to bring AI into your B2B search strategy.

AI understands intent, not just keywords

Forrester reports that 95% of B2B buyers expect to use generative AI in some part of their next purchasing journey. More than half report that it helps them discover new or additional vendors while speeding up the buying process. AI-powered B2B search allows M&D buyers to describe what they need in natural, everyday language. This type of “intent-based” search embeds much more meaning in the search. Instead of relying on exact matches, AI’s ability to use long, conversational phrases translate to fewer dead ends, more accurate matches, and faster product discovery.

AI search learns automatically

When integrated directly into the B2B commerce platform, AI search improves automatically, without constant human oversight. Product attributes and user event data like clicks, purchases, and abandoned queries are sent directly to the AI system. As a result, a continuous feedback loop trains and retrains the search mechanism on what the buyer is actually doing (not just what words they type in), which makes the service stronger over time.

AI personalization occurs at every level

AI search for B2B means understanding each buyer’s intent, but also the context in which they’re buying. In B2B ecommerce, that context varies dramatically depending on the buyer’s role, the industry, and a host of other factors. AI-based search enables group-level personalization while maintaining individual relevance. A top distributor, for example, sees what what’s most relevant to their goals, while individual users can still receive personalized results based on their activity.

“AI ranking optimizes not just for relevance, but by sorting products most likely to convert. Every buyer sees the right products faster, and those micro-improvements translate directly into maximum revenue impact.” –Sara Winter, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Optimizely.

Faster time-to-value, lower maintenance

Perhaps the most underrated benefit of AI search for B2B commerce is simplicity. Old workflows like manual indexing, rule building, and boosting are replaced with automatic configurations, where pre-trained models continue to learn from ongoing buyer behaviors. This translates into faster deployment, and a shorter path to ROI. The system starts learning immediately, and each query improves its understanding. Instead of spending hours tweaking search relevance, your teams can focus on strategy, merchandising, and buyer engagement.

Conversational search Is the next frontier

The way people search is changing. Natural-language interfaces, visual discovery, and voice input are all converging, and B2B is no exception. This is why Optimizely’s Configured Commerce is leading the way when it comes to AI-powered B2B search.

Optimizely’s integration with Google Vertex AI supports conversational and visual search, combining chat-style interactions with deep product intelligence. Soon buyers won’t need to know part numbers or product hierarchies; they will find a precise, curated set of relevant items through a simple conversational search. The result will be a buying experience that feels more like interacting with a knowledgeable sales rep — and less like digging through filters and spec sheets.

Optimizely Configured Commerce is changing the game for B2B Search

“Our goal is to provide an industry-leading search experience right out of the box. One that improves continuously and automatically with every buyer interaction.” – Sara Winter, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Optimizely.

Integration with Vertical AI Search gives Optimizely Configured Commerce unique advantages:

• Contextual understanding that extends beyond text to metadata. The model interprets descriptions, attributes, and relationships to anticipate buyers’ goals.

• Zero manual index tuning, and instant scalability across massive catalogs, all managed in a secure, fully hosted environment.

• Straightforward migration from Elasticsearch or similar systems, with provisioning and scaling handled by Optimizely.

Hear from Principal Product Manager, Sara Winter on how we discovered competitive advantages by employing Google Cloud AI’s best-of-breed search functionality. Plus, Google Cloud AI’s Noah Freeman shares how Vertex AI takes commerce search to a new, breathtaking level of AI understanding.

Watch now

Finally…remember best practices still matter

AI doesn’t replace the principles of great search, it strengthens them. The same best practices that once supported manual tuning now form the foundation for intelligent automation. Now more than ever, small improvements in site search can lead to big increases in order size and customer loyalty. Human insight, structured data, and a clear focus on buyer experience remain essential to success.

AI tools improve through feedback, but they still rely on human oversight. B2B ecommerce marketers need to work in tandem with AI B2B search, monitoring analytics, testing search layouts, and adjusting content strategies. This ensures continued alignment of the AI tool and the company’s business goals.

The best outcomes happen when AI and human insight operate in the same feedback loop. When human strategy and AI work together, search becomes a continuously self-improving system that feels effortless for buyers and valuable for the business. And that’s an unbeatable combination.