Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO): A Guide for Retailers

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of making your products and pages easy for AI search tools such as Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity to find, understand and cite in their answers. For retailers it is not a separate discipline from SEO: it is SEO plus clean, complete product data, plain-language answers and a fast, crawlable storefront. The payoff is visibility at the moment a shopper asks an assistant what to buy.

What GEO actually means for a retailer

Classic search returns a list of links. Generative engines read several sources, write a single answer and cite a handful of them. The term GEO comes from a 2023 Princeton-led paper accepted at KDD 2024, which found that content changes could lift a source's visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40%, and that what works varies by domain.

For an online store, "visibility" means three things:

• your product appears in the shortlist an assistant recommends;
• the facts the assistant states about it (price, size, compatibility, delivery) are correct;
• there is a link or a buy button that leads to your store or your marketplace listing.

Google's own position is useful here. Its guide to generative AI features in Search says that optimising for AI search is still SEO, because AI Overviews and AI Mode retrieve pages from the core Search index before generating a response. Its AI features documentation confirms there are no extra technical requirements beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet.

Why it matters now

AI answers change how clicks are distributed. In a Pew Research Center study of 900 US adults' browsing in March 2025, users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when one did not, and clicked a link inside the summary itself in just 1% of visits. Pew also found AI summaries appeared on 53% of searches of ten words or more, which is exactly how people describe products they want.

Yet the clicks that do come through are valuable. Adobe's 2025 holiday analysis recorded a 693% year-on-year rise in generative AI traffic to US retail sites, and those AI referrals converted 31% more than other traffic sources. Fewer, better-qualified visits is the pattern to plan for.

Australian commerce leaders see the same shift. In Salesforce's 2026 State of Commerce ANZ data, 91% of Australian leaders agreed large language models will be essential to product discovery within a year. Gartner had already predicted in 2024 that traditional search engine volume would fall 25% by 2026 as AI chatbots absorb queries.

The five GEO practices that matter most for products

1. Complete, consistent product data. Assistants compare products on attributes: dimensions, materials, compatibility, warranty, price and stock. If those fields are missing or contradict each other across your site, Google Merchant Center and your marketplaces, the assistant either skips you or repeats the error. Google's guidance specifically asks that structured data match the visible text on the page. See our guide to product structured data.

2. Answer the questions shoppers ask in full sentences. Long, conversational queries ("quiet dehumidifier for a small bedroom under $300") trigger AI answers. Product copy that states who the product suits, what problem it solves and its limits gives an engine something quotable. Put a short, factual summary near the top of each product and category page, then the detail.

3. Make every important fact readable as text. Specifications embedded in images, tabs that only load after a click, or prices rendered late by JavaScript are harder for crawlers to read. Google lists "making sure important content is available in textual form" among its recommendations.

4. Keep the storefront fast and crawlable. Do not block AI or search crawlers in robots.txt or at the CDN by accident, link important pages internally, and keep Core Web Vitals healthy. Speed also affects conversion once the AI-referred visitor lands; see site speed and Core Web Vitals.

5. Feed the platforms directly. Assistants increasingly draw on structured product feeds as well as web pages. Salesforce found 40% of Australian commerce organisations were already submitting data feeds to AI search platforms, and 42% were optimising product descriptions for natural language.

How to measure GEO

GEO is harder to measure than rankings, so track a small set of signals:

• referral sessions and revenue from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com in your analytics;
• a fixed list of 20 to 50 buyer questions in your category, checked monthly in two or three assistants, recording whether you are named and whether the facts are right;
• Search Console impressions for long, question-style queries;
• the share of AI-referred sessions that land directly on product pages.

Treat it as a monthly review rather than a daily metric. The engines change often, and the Princeton researchers noted that effective tactics differ by category.

Key figures

• Content optimisation lifted source visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40% in controlled tests (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024).
• Generative AI traffic to US retail sites rose 693% year on year in the 2025 holiday season, and converted 31% better than other sources (Adobe, 2026).
• Google users clicked a result in 8% of visits with an AI summary versus 15% without one (Pew Research Center, 2025).
• 91% of Australian commerce leaders say LLMs will be essential to product discovery within a year (Salesforce, 2026).
• 40% of Australian commerce organisations already submit data feeds to AI search platforms (Salesforce, 2026).

How eComChannels helps

GEO depends on the same thing marketplace ranking depends on: accurate, complete product information published consistently everywhere. eComChannels approaches it from both ends.

• Branded storefronts are built to be fast and SEO- and GEO-ready, and draw product facts from the same live record that powers your marketplace listings, so what an AI engine reads on your site matches what a shopper sees everywhere else.
• AI listing optimisation keeps one master product record and uses AI trained on each marketplace's listing rules to draft complete titles, attributes and plain-language descriptions. Your team approves the drafts, then bulk updates push them to the storefront and every connected channel. That closes the attribute gaps that make assistants skip a product, and saves the hours otherwise spent editing listings one channel at a time.

The result is more of your range eligible to be found and cited by AI search, with less manual upkeep. To see it on your own catalogue, book a demo or start a 30-day free trial.

FAQ

Is GEO different from SEO?

Mostly no. Google states that its AI features rely on its core ranking systems, so SEO fundamentals still apply. GEO adds emphasis on complete structured product data, plain-language answers to real questions, and feeding product data to AI platforms directly.

Can I pay to appear in ChatGPT or Google AI Mode answers?

Organic AI answers are not sold as placements. OpenAI says ChatGPT's product results are organic, unsponsored and ranked on relevance. Ads exist on some AI surfaces, but they are kept separate from organic answers.

How quickly will GEO changes show results?

Expect weeks, not days. Pages need to be recrawled and engines refresh at different rates. Track a fixed question list monthly so you can see the trend.