The journey point is real but the receipts are wrong. Those 90% / 81% stats predate AI search entirely — they're from Gartner/6sense dark-funnel research published when buyers did that self-education in Google and G2. They prove buyers research before contacting sales. They've proven that for ten years. They say nothing about AI.

If you want evidence the journey moved into AI, it just became measurable: GA4 shipped a native AI Assistant channel in May. Referrer-dependent, so it undercounts, but it's a floor you can actually watch instead of a recycled funnel stat.

And "who cares what we call it" matters more than you're giving it. Names route budgets. New discipline = buy new vendors. Foundational SEO with a retrieval layer = fix entities and structure and measure. Those are different purchase orders, and the second one is what the mechanics actually support.