AI Search Optimization for Ecommerce: The New Playbook for Visibility in ChatGPT and LLMs

AI search optimization - or what we call Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) - is shaping the way consumers discover products. Fast.

People aren't just using AI to write emails or brainstorm ideas anymore - they're now using tools like ChatGPT to recommend products, and the implications for online retailers are massive.

Instead of searching Google, reading reviews or browsing Amazon when looking for a product, people are now prompting AI models with questions like:

“What’s the best face serum for dry skin?”

“Can you recommend a sustainable sneaker brand?”

“Which protein powder has the cleanest ingredients?”

And unlike traditional search results, AI gives consumers 1-3 recommended products per search.

If your brand isn’t one of them, you're invisible.

What is AI Search Optimization?

AI search optimization shapes how your brand is discovered, recommended and described by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini.

While it shares a similar DNA to traditional SEO, the mechanics are wildly different:

How LLMs Recommend Products: The New Discovery Model

When a user prompts LLMs with a product-related query, it references a combination of:

• Training data (websites, reviews, product listings and brand mentions)

• Embedded knowledge (from sources up to 2023 and beyond)

• Live tools or browsing (in the case of Perplexity or Gemini Advanced)

This means that LLM product search results are heavily influenced by how your products are described, what others say about your brand, whether you’re cited by trustworthy sources and how clean, structured and rich your product data is.

How to Optimize for AI Discovery

Structure Your Catalog Data

Ensuring your product titles, descriptions and metadata are clear and complete is a crucial first step to earning LLM product mentions. AI tools heavily favor brands that provide straightforward, jargon-free information about what their products do and who they’re for, which means below-the-fold content like FAQs plays a key role here.

Run a Visibility Prompt Test

Next, you can simulate real user prompts to see where your products are (or aren’t) showing up. You can do this manually or with specialist GEO tools like Profound or Otterly. Identifying high-intent prompts that don’t surface your brand is the fastest way to uncover low-hanging fruit in your GEO strategy and win some fast, profitable mentions.

Find the Sources

Once you’ve identified prompts where you’re absent, look closely at the sources that LLMs are using to answer them. In most cases, models pull from a mix of high-authority press, blogs and trusted community platforms like Reddit when deciding which products to recommend.

Re-Train LLMs

Now it's time to provide LLMs with new, trustworthy content that aligns more closely with your target prompts. The right mix depends on the existing sources, but in some cases, even a few high-authority blog posts and a handful of Reddit citations can be enough to surface your product in the top 3 across most platforms. While this process shares similarities with traditional SEO, it's important to remember that GEO is narrative-driven, not just keyword-based, so your content should help LLMs understand not just what your product is, but why it matters and where it fits.

Why GEO Is Different From SEO (And Why That Matters)

It’s tempting to think of Generative Engine Optimization as the next evolution of SEO (and yes, there are plenty of traditional SEO agencies actively moving into the GEO space), but the truth is, they operate on a completely different set of rules.

Traditional SEO is about ranking higher on a list of blue links. Consumers still have to click, scan, compare and decide as part of the buying process.

GEO, on the other hand, is about getting your brand named outright (often as the only recommendation).

This shift changes everything. Instead of optimizing for crawlability and keyword density, GEO is about context, brand narrative and presence in the sources that LLMs trust and cite.

Backlinks still matter, but only if they come from places that influence LLMs.

Keywords help, but only when they show up in the kind of language these models understand and repeat.

That’s why most SEO teams aren’t prepared for this new surface, and why eCommerce GEO agencies like Future Theory exist.

How Early Movers Are Winning With GEO

Most brands aren’t paying attention to this... yet. And that makes right now a rare opportunity.

We’ve seen DTC companies gain visibility in highly competitive product categories - not by outspending bigger competitors, but by showing up in the places LLMs pay attention to.

Because there’s so little competition in this space (for now), the brands that act early are building lasting visibility. They're effectively training the models while everyone else is still optimizing H1 tags.

This window won’t stay open forever. But right now, it’s wide.. and it's available to any brand ready to stake their position in GEO product search.

Want to see where your brand stands?

Request a free AI visibility audit from Future Theory and find out how your products appear in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity — and how to get recommended more often.