From SEO to AEO: The Evolution of Ecommerce Discovery

The way people find things online is changing. Fast.

For twenty-five years, we’ve optimized for search engines—Google mainly. We’d chase keywords, build backlinks, tweak meta tags, and pray our pages climbed the rankings. It worked. For a while.

Now there’s a new player in town, and it’s not really a search engine at all. It’s an answer engine.

What’s Actually Happening

People are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s AI Overview questions they’d normally type into Google. “What’s the best ecommerce platform for a growing brand?” “How do I set up product feeds for AI assistants?” “Best Magento agency for enterprise.”

The answers? They come from AI models trained on—guess what?—your content.

If your product descriptions, help docs, and blog posts aren’t structured for AI consumption, you simply don’t exist in these conversations. That’s not fear-mongering. That’s what’s happening right now.

The Shift: From Keywords to Answers

Traditional SEO is about ranking for keywords. AEO is about being the answer.

When someone asks an AI “What’s the best way to handle inventory management for a 500-SKU Magento store?”, the AI doesn’t pull from the #1 ranked page. It pulls from sources that clearly answer the question—often combining multiple sources into a single response.

This means:

• Structured data matters more than ever
• Clear, direct answers beat clever SEO hacks
• Your content needs to explain things, not just promote them

What Ecommerce Merchants Should Do

I’ve been through platform shifts before. The merchants who adapted fastest were the ones who stopped worrying about ranking and started worrying about being useful.

Here’s what I’d do if I were running an ecommerce brand today:

1. Audit your public data. AI assistants pull from product pages, FAQs, shipping policies, and help docs. Is yours clear?

2. Add structured data. JSON-LD for products, FAQ pages, organization info. This is basic table stakes now.

3. Write answers, not ads. Your product descriptions should actually describe the product. Your blog posts should teach something.

4. Think conversationally. People ask AI questions in natural language. Your content should answer those questions directly.

The Opportunity

Most ecommerce brands are asleep on this. They’re still doing the same SEO they did in 2019.

The ones who figure this out—who get their product data in front of AI assistants now—will have a massive advantage. Not just in “visibility,” but in being the actual recommendation when someone asks “what should I use for X?”

I’ve been building AI tools (OpenClaw, Deckard) for ecommerce teams because I believe this shift is real. The brands that win will be the ones treating AI as a distribution channel, not just a buzzword.

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Want help structuring your ecommerce site for AI discovery? I’ve been working with teams on this. Let’s talk.