The Long-Question Shift: 2026 AI Search Study

Study: The Long-Question Shift: 2026 AI Search Study. 400 B2B SaaS buyer questions on Google, AI Overviews and ChatGPT
Report: GS-AS-2026-01, AI Search Visibility Series
Market: US (US English Google results; ChatGPT asked for US context)
Collected: By hand in a regular browser, 1 to 11 November 2026. No paid SEO tools or APIs.
Questions: IDs 1-200 are short questions. IDs 201-400 are long versions of the same topics (Topic ID links each pair).
Backlinks: Referring domains per site from the Open PageRank top 10 million domains list. Site-level, not page-level. 0 = not in the list.
Small site: Under 1,000 referring domains.
Dates: Only the dates Google shows on AI Overview source cards. Age measured on 10 November 2026.
ChatGPT: Signed out, web search on, links only. Some answers missing because of free-tier limits (see Questions tab notes).
Labels: Page type, site type and title traits come from rules on titles and URLs, so some will be wrong.
Formulas: Summary, Questions and Domains use live formulas. Scorecards hold model outputs.
Use: Free to use and quote with a link back to the study.
Cite as: The Long-Question Shift: Do Backlinks Matter for AI Search? 400 B2B Buyer Questions on Google, AI Overviews and ChatGPT (Report GS-AS-2026-01, AI Search Visibility Series). US market, data collected 1 to 11 November 2026.

Files
- questions.csv: One row per question (400): wording, version (short or long), topic ID, intent, funnel stage, counts.
- google_page1_results.csv: One row per Google page-1 result (3,266): position, domain, title and URL path as shown, page and site type, backlinks, whether the AI Overview cited it.
- ai_overview_sources.csv: One row per AI Overview source (2,309): order in the answer, domain, title, date shown by Google, age, site type, backlinks.
- chatgpt_links.csv: One row per ChatGPT link (1,592): domain, link type, backlinks, whether it was also on Google page 1 or an AI Overview source.
- domains.csv: One row per website (1,945): referring domains, rank in the public index, appearances, citations and links.

The Excel workbook has the same data plus summary, intent and scorecard tabs.