14 Mar 2026
How does G2 survive?
A lot of software websites I visit have the same badge:
“Ranked #1 on G2.” “4.8 stars on G2.”.
But I literally don’t know a single person who uses G2 to make purchase decisions anymore.
A few weeks ago, G2 acquired Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp. Combined - 6 million verified reviews, 200M+ annual buyers, revenue probably north of $150M.
People are calling this a strong consolidation strategy. Honestly, I am not sure.
1. G2’s business model has a trust problem.
Software vendors pay G2 to run “authentic” review campaigns. G2 collects the reviews, attracts millions of buyers, and then sells those buyer intent signals back to vendors. Think “Give me 5 US SMBs evaluating CRMs right now.”
It’s a brilliant flywheel. But the initial fuel of “trusted reviews” is running out. We’ve all gotten those $10 gift cards. Review gaming isn’t new, but it’s at a point now where neither buyers nor sellers treat G2 as the source of truth anymore.
2. LLMs are becoming the new discovery layer.
LLM-recommended traffic is becoming a growing share of every website’s visits. And while G2 is still referenced in LLM answers today, the weightage is decreasing fast.
Quoleady’s LLMO research found that 100% of tools in ChatGPT answers had Capterra reviews and 99% had G2 reviews. BUT, and more importantly, they found that review volume doesn’t determine ranking. G2’s moat of “mass verified reviews” simply doesn’t translate to AI visibility.
3. Agents are starting to make purchase decisions.
Claude Code and Codex are already choosing dev tools - email providers, auth services, databases. This will rapidly expand to CRMs, marketing tools, sales automation. And inauthentic paid reviews are the last place these agents will go for recommendations.
What will matter is how AI-usable your product is, how well it meets the buyer’s constraints, and whether it even shows up in the agent’s consideration set.
G2 is trying to acquire its way to scale, but the question isn’t whether G2 can get bigger. It is whether bigger even matters when the buyer isn’t a human browsing review sites anymore.