Big shifts

We’re in a “zero-click revolution”: up to ~60% of Google searches end without a click because AI overviews and rich SERP answers give users what they want on the page.

Classic SEO (“rank #1 in 10 blue links”) is being supplemented by GEO/AIO

AIO: making content machine-readable (schema/JSON-LD, structured data, FAQs, technical hygiene).

GEO: earning citations, brand mentions, and trust so LLMs surface you in their answers.

- The new “ranking system” is E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), reinforced through:

- Structured data & FAQs

- Third-party content, PR, reviews, and backlinks

- Consistent brand presence across the web

Future of AI-enabled commerce & agents

Jenna’s vision: consumers will train personal agents (grocery agent, wardrobe agent, recipe agent, etc.) that know their preferences (brands, price ranges, sizes, AOV) and negotiate/buy on their behalf—possibly using data from email receipts, purchase history, and more.

Matt Ezyk (Hanna Andersson): already built a grocery shopping agent that:

- Generates recipes based on constraints (high protein, low carb, time)

- Calls Instacart’s API and fills the cart
→ He sees commerce shifting from search + scroll to conversations + tasks, so brands must invest in speed, clean data, and strong APIs.

Matt Hudson (BILDIT): offers a dissenting but nuanced view:

- Tech doesn’t instantly rewrite all human behavior; many people still like stores, browsing, and visual shopping (especially apparel).

- AI chat is a “kick-ass iterative search” and a powerful discovery layer, but brand sites, apps, and physical stores remain critical.

- High-trust, low-emotional-investment categories (flowers, groceries, replenishment items) will be automated first; complex, fit-sensitive, or taste-driven categories (shoes, fashion) will lag.

Howie (Space Dinosaurs): counters that brand loyalty may actually increase:

- In a world flooded by generated content, people rely more on trusted brands and sources.

- Agents will make repeat buying from known brands easier (“buy the same pajamas in the next size up”), reinforcing loyalty.

They agree: AI will be a massive discovery & convenience layer, but brand trust, physical presence, and experience still matter a ton.

Brand loyalty & discovery

AI agents will sometimes prioritize trust and known brands (loyalty), and sometimes optimize purely for price/quality, creating “search serendipity”—finding brands you never knew but that fit your constraints.

This dynamic will:

- Reward brands with strong reviews, clear value propositions, and solid data.

- Punish brands that rely solely on traditional search and haven’t optimized for AI visibility.

- Everyone agrees brand loyalty isn’t dead, but it will be challenged and reshaped by LLM-driven discovery and agentic commerce.

Measurement, bots, and technical readiness

- Today, many sites use bot mitigation (Human, DataDome, Cloudflare, etc.) and may be blocking AI crawlers by default, limiting their presence in AI answers.

- The conversation shifts to “bot management” vs “bot mitigation”:

- You want a “fast lane” for good bots/AI agents that are answering user questions in real time.

Brands are starting to:

- Use security/bot tools and analytics to identify AI crawlers vs real users.

- Use tools like Scrunch AI, Profound, Peep, llmrankings, etc. to see how they appear in LLM responses relative to competitors.

- Create llm.txt files (like robots.txt) to explain who they are, what they stand for, and how AIs should understand their brand.

- Caveat: many measurement tools are still immature—often using older or local models, so they give directional but not complete insight.

Where should brands start?

The panel ends with a pretty concrete playbook:

Nail your fundamentals (data & UX)

Clean product data: accurate SKUs, attributes, sizes, specs, pricing, inventory, size guides.

Good descriptions & reviews.

Fast, low-friction site/app experiences.
→ This helps everything: SEO, AI, paid, and conversion.

Make your content machine-readable

Add JSON-LD/schema for products, FAQs, organization, reviews.

Create FAQ and guide content answering real questions your customers ask.

Consider an llm.txt to introduce your brand to AI crawlers.

Check that AI crawlers aren’t getting errors or blocked paths you don’t see in human analytics.

Stop the bleeding & establish visibility

Audit what LLMs currently say about your brand and competitors for key queries.

Ensure good bots are allowed through your CDN / bot management tools.

Start monitoring mentions, rankings, and trends over time (even if the data isn’t perfect).

Measure & experiment like it’s a new channel

Treat AI/GEO as a new channel: give it owners, KPIs, and a lightweight roadmap—even if nobody’s full-time on it yet.

Start small: pick one high-friction journey (e.g., sustainability queries, loyalty questions, a replenishment path) and build an AI-driven use case or experience around it.

Use existing vendors and tools that already have AI built in; you don’t need an AI department to begin.

Prepare for fast change

Right now, AI-driven traffic is not yet a huge, clearly attributed revenue channel, which makes it politically hard to invest in.

But the panel warns: when it hits, it will hit fast—brands that ignore it risk suddenly losing a big chunk of organic traffic when search interfaces shift more fully to AI answers.

Overall, AI search not as “the death of SEO” but as a new layer on top of it: brands that combine solid fundamentals, structured data, strong brand trust, and early experimentation with AI agents and measurement stand to benefit as consumer behavior gradually shifts toward agentic, conversation-driven commerce.

Transcript:

00:01:35 [Speaker 1]
Well, I'm really excited to be here today.
00:01:37 [Speaker 1]
Thanks everyone for joining.
00:01:39 [Speaker 1]
My name is Jenna Fleeman Poser, founder and CEO of Chief Digital Agency, and I am pleased to join forces with Space Dinosaurs and Build today to bring you an amazing discussion with some industry experts.
00:01:52 [Speaker 1]
Our topic today is gonna be SEO, winning the age of AI search with GEO.
00:01:58 [Speaker 1]
It's a new and a new topic, and we thought, hey.

00:02:01 [Speaker 1]
Let's get together, talk about some best practices, tools, and hear firsthand from brands other operationalizing against this new channel in the market today.
00:02:10 [Speaker 1]
So before we kick off, let me, go around the horn here, and let's take a moment to introduce ourselves.
00:02:16 [Speaker 1]
I know I'm myself.
00:02:18 [Speaker 1]
But, Matt, why don't you kick us off and let our listeners, learn a little bit about you, where you're from, the expertise you bring to this lovely broadcast.

00:02:30 [Speaker 2]
Sure.
00:02:31 [Speaker 2]
Hi, David.
00:02:32 [Speaker 2]
Hi, everyone.
00:02:32 [Speaker 2]
My name is Matt Ezyk.
00:02:34 [Speaker 2]
I lead engineering and technology for ecommerce at a brand called Hannah Anderson.

00:02:38 [Speaker 2]
If you're not familiar with the brand, we sell children's clothes for boys and girls, infant to age 12, and we also sell family match pajamas, which I'm wearing right now.
00:02:47 [Speaker 2]
I'm actually in our office here in Portland, Oregon.
00:02:50 [Speaker 2]
This is our annual all hands where everybody just brings out their Christmas PJs and wears them.
00:02:55 [Speaker 2]
So, we just wrapped that up right now.
00:02:57 [Speaker 2]
So, coming out fresh with that and still get them on and happy to represent here.

00:03:02 [Speaker 2]
I've been in ecommerce for, for a few decades now.
00:03:06 [Speaker 2]
I've worked with AI before it was generative when it was predictive and machine learning.
00:03:11 [Speaker 2]
When generative came on the scene, I quickly caught on to this trend with search and, always been very interested in it in the three years that we've been in this new generative world.
00:03:20 [Speaker 2]
So really happy to be here and dig into this topic.
00:03:22 [Speaker 2]
It's super interesting for me.

00:03:24 [Speaker 1]
Awesome.
00:03:25 [Speaker 1]
Howie, you wanna hear me through?

00:03:27 [Speaker 3]
Thanks, Jenna.
00:03:28 [Speaker 3]
I'm not wearing my pajamas, but I wish I was.
00:03:30 [Speaker 3]
And had I known, I I I would have.
00:03:32 [Speaker 3]
But as Jenna mentioned, I'm I'm Howie Ross.
00:03:34 [Speaker 3]
I'm one of the cofounders and head of technology at Space Dinosaurs, where we focus on ecommerce engineering and revenue optimization.

00:03:43 [Speaker 3]
And we've been involved in the, you you know, AI revolution that we're a part of right now, for a number of years, and I'm excited to share what we're seeing in the market and how you can, take advantage of this, you know, the current wave of technology innovation.

00:03:59 [Speaker 1]
Awesome.
00:04:00 [Speaker 1]
Matt.

00:04:01 [Speaker 4]
Well, mine doesn't sound as good as Howie does.
00:04:05 [Speaker 4]
I'm the founder of Build It.
00:04:06 [Speaker 4]
Build It is primarily a, a content experience platform, driven by AI, of course, centered around personalization and and, specializing in mobile app.
00:04:19 [Speaker 4]
So I'm I'm really excited about this panel.
00:04:21 [Speaker 4]
I mostly just because I love to pontificate.

00:04:24 [Speaker 4]
So I'm ready to talk about all the hypotheticals and what's gonna happen, not gonna happen, and have some good dissenting opinions from these smart folks.

00:04:32 [Speaker 1]
You're gonna shine that crystal ball for us.
00:04:35 [Speaker 1]
Tell us what's coming.
00:04:36 [Speaker 1]
I can't wait.
00:04:37 [Speaker 1]
Okay.
00:04:38 [Speaker 1]
So before we dig into the discussion, you know, Howie, maybe you can just kind of root us in current state.

00:04:44 [Speaker 1]
What are you guys seeing, you know, help ground us in in this, category?

00:04:50 [Speaker 3]
Sounds good.
00:04:51 [Speaker 3]
Happy to.
00:04:52 [Speaker 3]
So we are in the middle of what many folks are calling the zero click revolution.
00:04:56 [Speaker 3]
And there's a fundamental shift occurring where you know the approach of ranking number one in the list of the 10 blue links is being overtaken by the new reality that is AI overviews such as Google's and of course you know generated a generative AI and LLM such as chat GPT, Gemini that are providing you know synthesized direct answers to the questions that people wanna know including about what to purchase.
00:05:21 [Speaker 3]
And you know a key stat about that is that, up to 60% of Google searches are now ending without a click.

00:05:30 [Speaker 3]
And why is that?
00:05:30 [Speaker 3]
Because the answer is now right there on the page.
00:05:33 [Speaker 3]
So this really changes the notion of visibility.
00:05:37 [Speaker 3]
Whereas as I mentioned you wanted to be, you know, the top of the blue links.
00:05:41 [Speaker 3]
Now, you know, to be represented in these generative answers, it's all about the new currency, which is citations and brand mentions.

00:05:52 [Speaker 3]
And there's a couple components to that.
00:05:54 [Speaker 3]
Right?
00:05:55 [Speaker 3]
So it and there's a couple terms that I wanna I wanna cover here.
00:05:57 [Speaker 3]
So there's geo as we mentioned.
00:05:59 [Speaker 3]
And there's but there's also the related AIO, AI optimization.

00:06:04 [Speaker 3]
So AIO is making your content technically available, machine readable.
00:06:09 [Speaker 3]
So that's using structured data so that AI systems can easily understand and extract your content.
00:06:15 [Speaker 3]
And then there's JIA, which is earning the trust of these AI models so that your brand, can be listed as authoritative, and that's via those citations that we that I mentioned.
00:06:29 [Speaker 3]
So let's talk about a little bit about what we're seeing in the market.
00:06:33 [Speaker 3]
So you know demand is of course not dying as we just saw with our you know recent you know Black Friday and Cyber Monday which is of course become Cyber Week.

00:06:42 [Speaker 3]
Demand is up, but you know it's redirecting.
00:06:46 [Speaker 3]
So whereas shoppers used to Google, you know, best sustainable denim, now they're asking a more formulated question to an LLM are what are the best sustainable denim brands under a $150 and getting, you know, two to three direct recommendations as opposed to, you know, that list of lists.
00:07:08 [Speaker 3]
And so while, you know, the traffic for, you know, for many, retailers may be down or that at organic traffic.
00:07:16 [Speaker 3]
For many of them, we the conversion rate is actually up because many some of the reports we're seeing are that conversion rates from these generative sources are up two to five times what it was, from traditional search.
00:07:31 [Speaker 3]
So, this is there's a massive opportunity here, but in order to capitalize on it, there's, there's an acronym we need to follow, which is EAT, e e a t.

00:07:43 [Speaker 3]
Right?
00:07:43 [Speaker 3]
We need to, demonstrate that we have the experience, the expertise, the authoritativeness, and the trustworthiness.
00:07:51 [Speaker 3]
And how do we do that?
00:07:52 [Speaker 3]
As I mentioned, with dimensions and with backlinks, links back to our content on on the far data service.
00:07:59 [Speaker 3]
So what are we doing with our customers to ensure this?

00:08:04 [Speaker 3]
Well we're switching to an answer first approach.
00:08:07 [Speaker 3]
Of course we're gonna have our our e commerce sites with our products listed.
00:08:11 [Speaker 3]
There's even more emphasis on, on FAQs, guide content, and as I've mentioned repeatedly, those third party sources, in addition to the technical foundation, that I that I also mentioned.
00:08:25 [Speaker 3]
So, you know, and and also, you know, monitoring, how you stand and, how you are trending over time in your key areas that you wanna focus on.
00:08:38 [Speaker 3]
So, with that I'll summarize to say that, the channels for demand are definitely shifting, but the demand is there and there's a huge opportunity, to be capitalized on by by the brands that, approach geo and and whether it's

00:09:00 [Speaker 1]
Awesome.
00:09:01 [Speaker 1]
Thank you, Howie.
00:09:01 [Speaker 1]
I really appreciate it.
00:09:04 [Speaker 1]
So so let's kinda get into the discussion here.
00:09:06 [Speaker 1]
You know, obviously, thinking about, you know, SEO Yeah.

00:09:10 [Speaker 1]
Translation into a practice that is mirroring kind of that prioritization, but kind of in this new agentic world.
00:09:17 [Speaker 1]
You know, we'll we'll we'll talk about measurement.
00:09:19 [Speaker 1]
We talk about tools.
00:09:20 [Speaker 1]
We talk about strategy.
00:09:21 [Speaker 1]
Like, let's let's talk about the future.

00:09:24 [Speaker 1]
Let's talk about what we think this is going to look like.
00:09:28 [Speaker 1]
You know, what does the future of of AI enabled commerce really mean?
00:09:34 [Speaker 1]
And and let let me I'll give you an example here, and we can kind of debate and talk about what we think is gonna happen.
00:09:41 [Speaker 1]
But, personally, I believe that there is a world where I am going to train an agent to go out and shop on my behalf.
00:09:51 [Speaker 1]
It could be, I can have a number of different agents.

00:09:54 [Speaker 1]
Maybe I have a grocery agent.
00:09:56 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:09:56 [Speaker 1]
Maybe I have, you know, a shopping agent for my wardrobe.
00:10:00 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:10:00 [Speaker 1]
Maybe I've got, an agent that's gonna go find, you know, recipes and maybe interact with that grocery agent.

00:10:06 [Speaker 1]
Who knows?
00:10:06 [Speaker 1]
Who knows what it's really gonna look like?
00:10:08 [Speaker 1]
But the reality is that as a consumer, I'm gonna be incentivized to train and share data with this agent because I want it to go out and be as successful as it can be for me.
00:10:18 [Speaker 1]
And that doesn't just mean things I might wanna buy, but at what average order value, at what discount rate, with which brands.
00:10:26 [Speaker 1]
Right?

00:10:27 [Speaker 1]
And there are ways that we can do this in in in a really, you know, shortcut fashion as a consumer doing things like authorizing my Gmail account to an agent to allow to scrub every order confirmation email I've ever received.
00:10:40 [Speaker 1]
So it knows my size, my color preference, my brand proclivities.
00:10:43 [Speaker 1]
It understands how often I buy, what my average order value is, and it's gonna leverage all of that.
00:10:48 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:10:49 [Speaker 1]
It's gonna take that data, and it's gonna go leverage it in order to negotiate on my behalf and find these products.

00:10:56 [Speaker 1]
And so if that's true, a, do we believe that there is a future that looks like that?
00:11:03 [Speaker 1]
Where do we go from there?
00:11:05 [Speaker 1]
Where do we go from there?
00:11:06 [Speaker 1]
How do we plan for that as brands and as retailers and as technology companies?
00:11:12 [Speaker 1]
So do first of all, do we do we believe that there's a future that looks like this?

00:11:17 [Speaker 1]
And does it then transition to a world where brands have agents that operate for them, and these brand agents and consumer agents are now communicating in an agent to agent fashion.
00:11:26 [Speaker 1]
Like, is that the future?
00:11:28 [Speaker 1]
Do we believe in that?

00:11:32 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:11:32 [Speaker 2]
I can take that.
00:11:33 [Speaker 2]
I can take that first.
00:11:34 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.

00:11:34 [Speaker 3]
I was

00:11:34 [Speaker 2]
gonna say there's there's two mats here, so we gotta we gotta have a demarcation of of the mats.
00:11:40 [Speaker 2]
But, yeah, I I absolutely believe in that.
00:11:42 [Speaker 2]
I mean, the first thing you said really resonates with me because I built a grocery shopping agent.
00:11:47 [Speaker 2]
I don't think it's going to be for everything.
00:11:49 [Speaker 2]
Like, if you're shopping for shoes or pajamas.

00:11:53 [Speaker 2]
Right?
00:11:53 [Speaker 2]
You wanna see things.
00:11:54 [Speaker 2]
You wanna look at all the patterns.
00:11:56 [Speaker 2]
But at least for me, like, shopping for groceries is something I have to do.
00:12:01 [Speaker 2]
I don't really enjoy doing it.

00:12:02 [Speaker 2]
So I've I've actually done a lot of experimentation with putting in, like, hey.
00:12:07 [Speaker 2]
I wanna build this recipe, and I want high protein, low carb, and I want it to cook for three days.
00:12:13 [Speaker 2]
And it spits out recipes for me, and then it makes an API called Instacart and then finds all the ingredients I need.
00:12:20 [Speaker 2]
Right?
00:12:20 [Speaker 2]
So I think commerce really shifts from search and scroll to conversations and tasks.

00:12:26 [Speaker 2]
So the future shopper and and to some cases, current shoppers will expect agents that understand intent and handle complexity and really can complete outcomes.
00:12:36 [Speaker 2]
So if you're a brand listening, you really need to invest in speed, data quality, have really strong APIs, and that will really win because AI relies on clean structured inputs.

00:12:49 [Speaker 4]
I'm gonna take a slightly dissenting view.
00:12:51 [Speaker 4]
Sure.
00:12:52 [Speaker 4]
And I and I and I feel like people will be surprised by this because I'm, you know, app guy, technologist guy.
00:13:01 [Speaker 4]
But I've thought about this deeply for even the last two years.
00:13:04 [Speaker 4]
Right?

00:13:06 [Speaker 4]
First thing is that technology doesn't drive human behavior.
00:13:10 [Speaker 4]
Now it drives ours.
00:13:12 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:13:12 [Speaker 4]
Because we are the technology people.
00:13:14 [Speaker 4]
But ChattGPT, no matter where it gets, my grandma's not gonna use it, and she still buys stuff.

00:13:20 [Speaker 4]
I also think about the history where the Internet was gonna kill TV, and TV was gonna kill radio, and radio was gonna kill newspapers, which it finally, you know, did mostly.
00:13:31 [Speaker 4]
But how long did it take?
00:13:34 [Speaker 4]
I mean and there are still people that enjoy newspaper.
00:13:36 [Speaker 4]
So I think there's a couple things.
00:13:38 [Speaker 4]
Like, our our frame of reference has gotta be really important.

00:13:41 [Speaker 4]
I'm a what I'm gonna basically say is it depends.
00:13:44 [Speaker 4]
Right now, chat is a incremental search, and it's a really kick ass incremental search, or iterative search.
00:13:54 [Speaker 4]
Excuse me.
00:13:54 [Speaker 4]
Not incremental.
00:13:55 [Speaker 4]
Iterative search.

00:13:57 [Speaker 4]
And in that aspect, if we think about who is challenging the chatbots, Google, and how Google used to have or has PLAs today, product listings, right, and had Google checkout, did that change everything?
00:14:10 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:14:10 [Speaker 4]
It did.
00:14:11 [Speaker 4]
But it didn't change all of our behaviors.
00:14:14 [Speaker 4]
So I don't think that the face of the brand of a a website, so to speak, is gonna go away.

00:14:20 [Speaker 4]
I think of it as we're getting a kick ass search that's on other channels.
00:14:26 [Speaker 4]
And I think that the face still stays there because the brand's more important.
00:14:29 [Speaker 4]
And I think what Howie said was was really important to understand is that if you have the right product and it gets found and you're in those engines that are talking to each other because that all of that part is absolutely gonna happen, then you're gonna see a much higher conversion just which basically is much less browsing.
00:14:47 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:14:47 [Speaker 4]
So that's true for very certain type of products, high search products or products where there's high trust.

00:14:55 [Speaker 4]
But I don't think that it necessarily gets rid of, in particular, apparel where the size data is not there yet, or do I trust the brand?
00:15:03 [Speaker 4]
Like, for instance, I can't buy Nike because it's narrow.
00:15:06 [Speaker 4]