The GEO Playbook: How (& Why) to Optimize for AI Discovery

The way your customers find products is changing. Fast.

Every week, we hear a similar question from merchants:

"How can we make sure our brand shows up when people use AI tools like ChatGPT? And how can we make it so customers can actually buy them once they do?"

It's the catalyst for many of the AI conversations we're having right now—and the volume has grown exponentially over 2025. If you're asking the same, you're in good company. 

That’s why we’ve interviewed the world's top commerce experts from across Shopify—from SEO to product to the field and beyond—to bring you the definitive GEO playbook. 

But why should you listen to us? 

We've spent 20 years making commerce better for everyone. We've processed over $1.4T+ in global commerce since our inception and work with some of the largest and most well-known brands in commerce. This means that when patterns emerge, we see them first.

Patterns like mobile going from curiosity to critical, social evolving from pastime to sales channel, and now, AI transforming how consumers discover and buy products. 

And we don’t just watch these shifts—we anticipate and build for them. Leading AI platforms choose to partner with us first, which means brands on Shopify are the first to sell right within AI channels like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot Checkout, Google AI Mode, and Gemini. We even co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) with Google—the new, open standard that powers AI checkout across the industry.

So when we give AI discoverability recommendations, they’re not just theoretical. They’re based on our frontline knowledge of where commerce is headed, and the tools we’re building to help our merchants get there first. 

First, let’s start with the basics. 

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Generative Engine Optimization—GEO for short—is exactly what it sounds like.

It's the practice of optimizing your brand and products to show up when consumers search using AI tools. ChatGPT. Google's AI Overviews.

As someone who works in ecommerce, you’re probably already familiar with this concept even if the term is new to you (and when it comes to AI, just about everything is new).

Think of it as SEO's evolution for the AI era: instead of optimizing for search engine rankings, you're optimizing to be recommended by AI agents.

If you've been wondering how to make sure your products appear when someone asks ChatGPT "what's the best [your category]?"—that's the question GEO answers.

The shift: Why GEO matters now

The way your customers are searching is evolving. 

We’re seeing AI search grow at a tremendous rate—AI-driven traffic to Shopify sites is up 8x and AI-driven orders to Shopify sites are up 15x since January 2025.

A recent survey we ran also found that 64% of shoppers said they’re “likely” to use AI to some extent when making purchases. 

All of this points to the fact that more and more people, instead of typing "best running shoes" into Google and clicking through a sea of blue links, are having conversations with chatbots like ChatGPT.

They're saying things like: "I signed up for my first marathon and I'm having arch pain. I have flat, wide feet and wear women's size 9. I need a shoe that is supportive, but not too heavy. What shoes should I buy?"

This isn't speculation. This is happening right now. So if your products aren't showing up in those conversations, you're invisible to an entirely new category of high-intent buyers.

If you haven’t yet invested in a GEO strategy, don’t worry, you’re not behind yet, but the window to get ahead is right now. The brands that move first—the ones who figure out how to show up in AI recommendations before their competitors—will capture disproportionate market share.

Early advantages compound.

So the question isn't whether AI discovery matters. It's whether you're going to be ready when it does.

The frontier: What we know (and don't know)

Let's be honest about something.

Nobody can tell you exactly how to rank #1 in ChatGPT (or any other AI chatbot) results—not even the companies building these systems, because they're evolving faster than anyone can fully document.

But that’s not a reason to put off GEO—we’re simply at the very beginning. The risk is actually in waiting.

Not everything is a complete unknown either. Here's what we can tell you.

• SEO fundamentals still matter. Strong rankings in traditional search engines increase your chances of being cited in AI answers. Most models still lean on the open web and search indexes; they just add reasoning on top.
• Brand authority matters. AI looks beyond your site: Reddit threads, reviews, press, and community signals. Some signals come from your site; the rest comes from everywhere else.
• Data quality matters. Clean, structured, machine-readable product data gives AI the raw material it needs to recommend you.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Much like the early days of SEO, the first movers who invested in quality content, technical excellence, and real authority won. Same story, new stage.

Those first movers similarly had no perfect playbook. Google launched in 1998, but its reporting tools and guidance for webmasters didn’t roll out until years later. It was the ones who experimented, iterated, and learned on their own that came to dominate the channel. 

Then, as Google matured, education and feedback loops improved. AI will likely follow a similar arc. This is the most uncertain it will ever be. From here, it only gets clearer. But don’t be tempted to wait for perfect clarity before diving in.

Kendo Brands gets this. As Chief Digital Officer Sapna Parikh put it, “You have to be a risk taker to win. The ability to jump in and be on top of the trends is really the difference between being successful and being average.” So when Shopify was first to market with channels like Roblox and TikTok Shop, Kendo dove in. Now? Kendo is leading the social commerce game. 

The pattern is clear—the brands that figure out emerging channels early will have a significant head start when the dust settles. Start experimenting now, while the landscape is still forming. 

Hopefully by now you’re convinced that GEO is worth investing in, so let’s get into the specifics. How exactly do you optimize your site for AI discovery? 

There are three main pillars:

1. SEO Fundamentals
2. Brand Building
3. Data Quality

1. SEO fundamentals: What works for search works for AI too

To understand why SEO fundamentals matter for GEO, you need to understand how AI agents actually search. 

Let’s start with an example prompt: “I need a marathon shoe for flat feet under $150.”

We know exactly what happens when you type that into an AI agent because the agent will actually show you the steps it took to get to the answer.

First, the AI breaks this into invisible queries sent to search engines. In this case, things like “best running shoes flat feet ratings” “marathon shoes durability” “running shoes under $150 inventory.”

This is referred to as a query fan out—the AI system's process to split out a user's query into multiple sub-queries, collecting information for each sub-query, then merging the relevant information for each sub-query into a single response. Unlike search which runs one query and returns one set of results; a query fan out produces several sets of results, then combines them to build a more holistic answer.

Then, the AI synthesizes all that information in order to provide one answer based on the data that it finds. Essentially, AI doesn’t ‘know’ everything. It just acts like a super-fast research assistant. 

This makes it much easier to understand why SEO fundamentals matter for GEO — AI chatbots are relying on search engines to provide the inputs for the answers that it provides. 

If you've already been investing in SEO, you're already a lot of the way there.

Quality content? Critical. Create pages that are clear, descriptive, attribute-rich—and answer the questions buyers are actually asking.

Title tags and headings? Still matter. Write them so Google—and AI—knows exactly what your page delivers. 

Robots.txt? Make sure it’s not blocking the pages you want AI to find, and specifically allowing traffic to pages that you want LLMs to find—size guides, return policy, locations, store hours, and more.

Sitemap.xml? It needs to include a complete, up-to-date list of your site’s live pages. 

You can also ask Claude, which will browse live sites, what it wished it knew about your site. We’ve run this actual prompt with enterprise retailers before who’ve been amazed at the quality of the suggestions it provided. 

We also recommend diving into our other guides like The Ecommerce SEO Guide and The Complete SEO Checklist—because remember, most of the things you’d do to optimize your site for search are transferable to AI visibility. 

If you’re on a platform like Shopify, a lot of these fundamentals are either taken care of for you or we make it easy to add and customize them—take your robots.txt file for example. Shopify creates one for you by default, which works for most stores, but we also provide options for customizing it. 

Another SEO and GEO fundamental that Shopify takes care of by default is content accessibility. By default, Shopify does something called server side rendering. This means that when search engines and AI crawlers try to access your pages, they see the content immediately—no JavaScript rendering required. 

We spend next to nothing on advertising, like less than 1% of our revenue. We've never hired an SEO agency. We use Shopify, read a couple articles, and we are the number one in search for most of what we want.

But aside from these SEO fundamentals, there’s another fundamental that you can’t afford to overlook in the age of GEO—your brand. 

2. Brand building: Why it still matters in the age of AI

Your brand matters more in the AI era. Not less. 

We understand why some merchants are worried. A question we hear often: “If people start buying directly from AI apps, what is the purpose of our online store, and can we even distinguish ourselves from the sea of other brands that those same AI apps are recommending to consumers?”

Thankfully, the future of commerce isn’t a zero sum game. Your website—and your brand—still have a critical role to play in ensuring that customers can find you in the AI era. 

Think about the origin of branding. As mass-produced goods spread during the Industrial Revolution, consumers (who previously were familiar only with locally produced goods) had no way to know if a soap from a distant factory was any good. But if it had a brand—a mark from a manufacturer you recognized—you knew: "This is the same quality soap I got last time." 

A brand is a promise. A shortcut to trust. 

It’s the same with AI tools today. They want to recommend trusted brands. 

How do these chatbots assess trust? Through looking at factors like:

• Authority: Are you a recognized leader in your category?
• Reputation: What do customers, publishers and influencers actually say about you?
• Relevance: Do you have a clear identity and focus?
• Popularity: Are people talking about you, linking to you, recommending you? 

Basically, all the good, old-fashion brand work you’ve likely been investing in for decades. 

So should you keep investing in your website? Absolutely. Your product pages, content, reviews, UGC and beyond all have a critical role to play in ensuring you show up in AI results. 

And beyond that, keep investing in brand building. Remember: only some of what AI considers comes from your website. The rest is everything else on the internet. But don’t panic. You have more influence over this than you think. Things like your PR strategy, review management, community engagement, and social proof. All of these factors outside your website directly impacts your AI discoverability.

Aren’t sure if you’re getting this right? Open ChatGPT and ask: "What does the internet say about [your brand name]?"

See what it says. Note which pages it references. Check if it's getting things right or wrong.

• If AI references pages you own: Correct those pages if they have outdated or wrong information.
• If AI references outside sources: Check if you have a comparable page on your own site. If you do, make sure it's linked prominently—in your footer, on your about page, somewhere crawlable. If you don't, create it, and make sure it has accurate, up-to-date information.
• If you have other owned channels (Medium, YouTube, social profiles): Make sure you're telling your brand story consistently across all of them.

You can even ask LLMs to look at your product pages directly: "What data are you finding on just this page? What do you recommend I add?" Just make sure you ask directly if it's looking at the live page once you get a response to ensure accuracy.

That's free intelligence you can act on immediately.

On Shopify, this gets even easier—you’re not just playing defense. You’re playing offense. Our tools put you in control of your brand across every touchpoint, including AI conversations: 

Knowledge Base lets you dictate exactly what AI tools say when shoppers ask about your brand. Policies. Hours. Product details. You control the narrative, and you see what questions are being asked over time.

Storefront MCP brings agentic experiences directly to your website, helping customers search, ask, and buy in natural language so brand.com stays relevant as AI interfaces become the norm.

And Agentic Storefronts syndicates your brand and checkout experience in AI conversations. Your business logic. Your unique brand. Everywhere.

This isn't about keeping up. It's about pulling ahead. 

If you've been building a real brand. One with genuine customer love. With earned media. With community. With reputation. AI is going to be your advantage. Because brands that have done the work will appear more in training data, and are more likely to be recommended to chatbot users. 

The same stuff that's always mattered for building a great brand is still what matters today. The difference is that AI is now actively synthesizing all of this to decide who gets recommended. Remember, buyers still trust the same sources. They still care about the same things. AI just makes it easier to get.

Traditional SEO and brand building are critical foundational elements to your GEO strategy, but on their own, they’re not enough to ensure you’re showing up correctly and consistently in AI chatbots. So finally, let’s take a look at the third pillar of GEO visibility — data quality. 

3. Data quality: Direct API access (and why your platform matters)

There's a gap between what renders well for a human shopper and what an AI agent can actually consume. Your product page might look perfect, but if the details live in the wrong places, AI can't see any of it.

Here's what to watch for:

Data trapped in display logic: If your product information lives in rendering templates, JavaScript logic, or custom display rules, you’re not making things easy on an agent. The fix is making sure the data lives in structured, standard fields that an LLM can directly query and interpret.

Primary data fields left incomplete: Titles, descriptions, variant options, images, prices, and product taxonomy should be filled out completely, using specific and literal language. These are the fields AI agents rely on to surface and sell your products.

Variants modelled as separate products: If the same shirt in 5 colors exists as 5 separate products in your data layer, an agent might not know they're related. Group variants under a single parent so AI sees one product with options, not five different products.

Missing or vague product taxonomy: Assign the most specific product type or category possible, ie. "women's waterproof hiking boots" not just "footwear." The more specific your taxonomy, the more accurately AI can classify and surface your products for relevant queries.

Marketing copy where literal descriptions should be: If your product title says "Walk on Clouds" instead of "lightweight running shoe," you might be adding unnecessary confusion. Be clear and specific in your product titles and descriptions.

However, here's the reality that changes everything.

Yes, AI agents crawl the web to find products. That's why SEO and brand matter so much.

But when a direct API is available? AI prioritizes that first. Every time.

Think about it from the AI's perspective. It can either scrape and try to interpret your website—hoping the data is current, hoping it's structured correctly, hoping it hasn't changed since the last crawl—or it can tap directly into a trusted API that delivers real-time inventory, accurate pricing, and complete product attributes. 

Without this direct access, by the time a potential customer sees your data, there’s a high likelihood that it’s already stale—inventory has come and gone, new colors have been introduced, new discounts have dropped. Your product information changes too frequently to rely on web scraping. 

So, which method would you trust if you were making a recommendation to millions of buyers?

Good SEO and brand foundations can get you close, but direct API access takes this up a notch. This is where being on Shopify becomes your advantage.

As part of our latest Editions, we announced Agentic Storefronts. It’s automatically enabled for eligible Shopify merchants, helping them instantly and accurately get discovered and sell on AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot Checkout. And at NRF 2026 in NYC, we added Google AI Mode and Gemini to the list.

Shopify Catalog will syndicate and surface your products to AI chats everywhere—no bespoke integrations or custom setups needed. 

We've put power into merchants' hands to discover and control all of the agentic storefronts that Shopify offers directly in the admin—toggle AI platforms on or off, see which support native checkout, and control visibility on a per-product basis. 

We're making every Shopify store agent-ready by default. Shopify is the easiest solution for merchants who want AI agents to find their storefronts, understand their products, and complete transactions.

And since then, we’ve opened up the Shopify Catalog to any brand with our new Agentic Plan. That means all merchants, whether or not they’re on Shopify, can sell across AI channels. When commerce flows freely across the entire ecosystem, everyone wins. 

When agents pull from Shopify Catalog, they know they’re getting clean data. Current pricing. Live inventory. Accurate discounts.

That trust matters.

Because AI agents don't recommend products they can't confidently vouch for. And they can't vouch for products when the data is stale, incomplete, or conflicting.

You've spent years and millions of dollars building your brand. Optimizing your SEO. Creating content that establishes authority.

Don't let fragmented data be the thing that makes you invisible to AI.

The brands winning in AI discovery have three things working together: strong SEO fundamentals, genuine brand authority, and clean data flowing directly to AI through trusted APIs.

Shopify gives you that third pillar out of the box: we built the commerce plumbing right, so you can focus on your brand and your customers, knowing that we’ll keep you at the forefront of the industry.

We’re in an industry defining moment right now with all the different technologies that are arising. Who's the partner that’s going to drive what that next generation of consumer experience is going to be? It's Shopify.

The Bottom Line

Consumer behavior is shifting. Discovery is changing. The way people find and buy products is being fundamentally transformed by AI.

But here's what hasn't changed:

Great brands still win. Great products still win. Great customer experiences still win.

GEO isn't about gaming a new algorithm. It's about doing the fundamentals really well—clean data, strong brand, genuine authority—so that when AI looks for products to recommend, it recommends you.

This playbook works for any merchant, anywhere. But if you're building on Shopify? You've got an advantage. We built the commerce infrastructure for this moment so you don't have to. 

Want to learn more? Check out our new webinar: A practical guide to AI discovery. 

Watch the webinar