As more people use AI for shopping research, and recommendations, brands will begin optimizing for AI tools.
Imad Khan Senior Reporter
Imad is a senior reporter covering Google and internet culture. Hailing from Texas, Imad started his journalism career in 2013 and has amassed bylines with The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, Tom’s Guide and Wired, among others.
Expertise Google | AI | Internet Culture
AI agents search for brands on a scale that isn’t human. According to a report published by digital marketing company BrightEdge on Wednesday, organic search is equivalent to one-third of paid search. BrightEdge defines AI agents as any AI tool which works on your behalf. OpenAI, for example, will use its live browsing feature to search across brands of bicycles to find information if you ask ChatGPT about the most cost-effective bikes to ride on gravel with teenagers. Other popular AI search agents, such as Google’s Gemini and Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude, also search across websites to find the information they need.
Truly intelligent AI goes beyond chatbots — this report does not include the recently launched ChatGPT Agent which can browse the internet on a virtual desktop, and do things like book flights or order pizza.
“First, we’ll be delegating more decision-making and prioritization to LLMs — similar to how Google became the main entry point to the web, but this time with multiple players like Google, ChatGPT and potentially others,” BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu said in a statement. “Second, we’ll gain the ability to match and research products and services at a level of detail that simply wasn’t practical before. The flip side is that what you see will depend on what the AI finds and prioritizes, which will have implications for transparency, diversity of results and accuracy.”
The rise of AI means humans are offloading more informational synthesis to machines. This makes research and other types of work much faster and easier (though you should always double check anything an AI tool suggests).
It also means that you can now find products for your very specific requests, rather than trying to figure it out for yourself after reading reviews and internet comments.
Optimizing for AI
Marketers and search engine optimization experts are becoming keenly aware of this. Instead of optimizing for Google Search, as they did in the past, there’s an emerging pivot towards AI optimization. For instance, in the past, if a shoe brand wanted to increase sales, it would try to get to the top of Google Search results for keywords like “shoes” or “sneakers.” This was done via search engine optimization, or SEO.
But in the age of AI, brands need to try and find a way to get their products recommended by ChatGPT and other AI chatbots. Doing so requires some SEO tricks, and also GEO stands for generative engine optimization.
Since AIs are designed to understand user intent and to read online content, brands must optimize their content to be easily readable by AI, who often considers complex variables and structured information. Brands will want to ensure that potential customers see their product first.
“History shows that gaming the algorithm never leads to high-quality results,” Yu. “At some point, the company supplying the answers must step in to address it or risk losing users to better alternatives.”
AI Chatbots are vulnerableto prompt injection, a malicious way of tricking AI Chatbots into changing their responses. Yu admits that this is a potential risk, but AI companies are likely to build more safety nets in order to mitigate it. Yu said
“The difference is that AI systems have the potential to cross-check information and apply richer quality signals than traditional search,” . “At the core, brands still need to focus on creating trustworthy, authoritative content and monitoring how they’re represented in AI-driven answers.”
Disclosure: Ziff Davis (CNET’s parent) filed a lawsuit in April against OpenAI alleging that it had infringed Ziff Davis copies rights in training and operating their AI systems.
