Forrester's Own AI Tool Just Overtook Search

Forrester reported Q2 2026 results on July 30, with total revenue of $100.2 million, down 10% from $111.7 million a year earlier. They also published research about how AI is displacing search across enterprise workflows and how AI had displaced search inside its own platform.

Forrester AI now accounts for more client interactions with its research database than traditional indexed search, according to the press release.

Forrester AI has overtaken indexed search as the dominant method Forrester clients use to interact with the company's research database. Not among certain user segments, but across the board. 

The company that has spent the past year researching and reporting on the shift from search to AI discovery is now experiencing that shift in its own product metrics: total Forrester AI users up 33% in Q2 versus Q1 and 69% year over year, with prompts up 58% quarter over quarter and 105% year over year.

"We are revolutionizing how clients engage with research and advisory firms," CEO George Colony said on the call.

The Visibility Vacuum Is No Longer a Research Report

Colony coined the term "visibility vacuum" at Forrester's B2B Summit North America in Phoenix in Q2, a term for the emerging phenomenon in which declining SEO and search effectiveness makes it impossible for sellers to gather buying signals from customers who are increasingly researching through AI rather than traditional search engines.

The concept is directly relevant to Forrester's own commercial position. Its clients are paying for research to navigate an environment in which the rules of customer engagement are being rewritten by AI. 

And Forrester's own product metrics confirm that the shift it is documenting is already happening inside its own platform, clients are querying Forrester's research database through AI rather than through indexed search, at a rate that has now exceeded the traditional method entirely.

The commercial response is Forrester AI for Microsoft Copilot, launched in Q2 and confirmed by Chief Product Officer Carrie Johnson Fanlo as the first such product from any company in Forrester's competitive set. 

Clients can now access Forrester research and guidance directly from their Microsoft workflows without switching context to a Forrester-specific interface. Hundreds of accounts have been activated for Teams and Copilot access. Integrations with Gemini, Claude, and Slack are described as in progress, according to the press release.

What Forrester's Research Is Saying About AI This Quarter

Three proprietary reports published in Q2 describe how senior corporate roles will change in the AI era. The AI CIO report is the most detailed. Colony outlined four new roles the CIO will need to perform.

Architecting enterprise decision-making as agents make an increasing share of operational choices; governing autonomous systems when agents fail; acting as economist of AI value by managing costs and calculating trade-offs between agentic and human work; and teaching boards of directors to understand probabilistic AI outputs rather than the deterministic reporting they are accustomed to.

A separate Forrester research report on US marketing agencies found that nine of the top ten agencies are now using generative AI and 50% are deploying agentic AI. 

The vendor landscape has shifted materially. Google is now the top AI provider to agencies, Adobe is second in generative AI, and Anthropic is second for agentic. All three have displaced OpenAI from the positions it held a year earlier.

Forrester's AI Access product has generated approximately $10 million in bookings since its launch nine months ago, according to the press release. 

Despite the overall 10% revenue decline, driven primarily by the company's exit from strategy consulting and its shift to smaller event formats, tech research contract value bookings grew double digits in Q2, with CV growth across the full business targeted by year-end.