From Discovery to Influence: A Guide to AEO and GEO

Practical data strategies to empower retailers for AI search, AI assistants and AI browsers

When a shopper asks an AI assistant for a "lightweight carry-on bag that fits a laptop and doesn't look corporate," how does your brand get considered? SEO got you here, but it won't get you there. AI assistants, browsers, and agents evaluate and interpret your data in new ways, and showing up in their recommendations requires a different kind of readiness.

The new discovery landscape

The goal is no longer traffic. It's influence.

AI assistants, browsers, and agents don't just index your site. They reason over data on and off your site and decide whether your brand is worth recommending. That decision depends on how complete, current, and contextual your product information is. Every detail, benefit, and price signal matters.

SEO is how you won in search. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) are how you win the recommendation in AI-powered discovery. AEO drives clarity—accurate, real-time data AI can interpret. GEO drives credibility—content that positions your brand as authoritative. That's the new game.

Why early matters

Agentic commerce is still early, which means most brands haven't figured this out yet. The ones who move now won't just be discoverable when it matters. They'll be the benchmark everyone else is catching up to.

Most brands are still treating product data as a feed to maintain, not a strategic asset. Early movers are auditing their catalogs for AI readability, filling in the context gaps, and building systems to keep data fresh across all three pathways.

The playbook

We've put together a playbook for brands ready to show up in AI-driven discovery, whether that's an assistant answering a question, a browser surfacing recommendations, or an agent completing a purchase. Inside: how AEO and GEO apply differently to each, the three data pathways that determine whether you get seen (feeds, crawled data, and offsite data), and insights like:

• Most brands already have the data AI needs. It's just buried.
• Completeness beats cleverness—products with more filled-in fields rank higher, period. 
• AI doesn't just read your site. It acts on it. A broken live experience means a lost sale.

Ready to be the brand AI recommends?

Download the playbook here