AI Is Recommending Your Competitors Not You
When customers ask ChatGPT or AI search tools for recommendations, your brand doesn't exist. We fix your content and structure so the AI search engines actually mention you when it counts.
One of the first ecommerce agencies to offer AI Search Optimization
Since
2024
100+
Brands Optimized
The agency fuelling growth for brands like these
Search Has Changed. Has Your Strategy?
When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity one of these questions, the AI gives a direct answer – with specific brand recommendations. The brands that get recommended win the sale. The ones that don’t get mentioned never existed to that buyer.This is not a future trend. AI search is happening right now:
- Over 100 million people use ChatGPT monthly
- Perplexity is processing 10M+ queries per day
- Google AI Overviews now appear on more than 50% of US searches
- AI-referred traffic is growing 25-40% month over month for brands that track it
What's Included In Our AI Search Optimization Services?
AI Visibility Baseline & Monitoring
To enhance your AI search presence, we first assess your current position. We conduct brand query testing across various platforms, noting your visibility, feedback, and competitor advantages.
Content Optimization for AI Comprehension
AI models use your website content for recommendations. We optimize product pages, blog posts, and FAQs to be the most useful and authoritative. We want your content to be memorable for AI models.
Structured Data & Technical AI Signals
Schema markup and structured data help AI understand your content. We implement Product, FAQ, Review, and Organization schema to make it machine-readable for search engines and AI.
Brand Entity Authority Building
AI models assess brand credibility via citations and mentions. We enhance your brand’s authority through community engagement, media mentions, and backlinks that signal credibility to AI systems.
Competitor Association & Differentiation
We analyze how AI models position your brand against competitors, highlighting comparisons and opportunities to differentiate. Then we create content that shapes those associations.
AI Search Reporting & ROI Tracking
We track AI traffic in your analytics, monitor brand mentions, and report on AI visibility improvement. As AI search matures, we evolve tracking for clearer AI search ROI.
The Stryde AI Visibility Framework
A proven 4-phase system for growing D2C brands through AI search engine optimization (AEO & GEO)
from first audit to sustained revenue growth.
Baseline
(Visibility Audit)
We establish your current AI search presence where you appear, how you're described, and what your competitors are getting that you're not. This becomes your baseline for measuring progress.
Architecture
(Content & Technical Foundation)
We optimize your site's content architecture, structured data, and technical foundation to be maximally comprehensible to AI models. This includes schema markup, content organization, etc.
Authority
(Brand Entity Building)
We build your brand's authority in AI training signals through community mentions, media citations, high-authority backlinks, and strategic content that positions you as the go-to source in your category.
Content
(AI-Optimized Content Creation)
We create and optimize content specifically designed to be cited, recommended, and referenced by AI models buying guides, comparison content, definitive category resources, and FAQ content that answers the questions AI users are asking.
Measure
(AI Visibility Tracking & Reporting)
We track your AI search visibility monthly brand mention frequency, platform coverage, competitor comparison, and AI-referred traffic. You'll see exactly how your visibility is improving over time.
Early Results from Our AI-First Clients
Pi Baby
Crane Baby
ERGOBABY
The Brands That Move First Will Win This Category
Early Movers Win
Early movers win in SEO. Brands with strong organic search from 2012 to 2018 gained advantages hard to replicate. AI search follows this pattern, but the opportunity window is shorter, so early action is crucial.
12–18 Month Opportunity
Brands have 12-18 months to establish AI search presence before it becomes competitive. Companies building authority in AI now will be more likely to appear as trusted recommendations later.
The Cost of Waiting
Waiting lets competitors gain an edge. AI search is early-stage with less competition. In a year, agencies will offer AI SEO services, making it crowded. In two years, AI search authority may mirror traditional SEO authority.
We Optimize Across the
AI Search Ecosystem
ChatGPT
Largest AI assistant user base. Conversational product recommendations.
Perplexity AI
High purchase intent. Users often in active buying mode.
Google AI Overviews
Highest search volume. Appears above organic results.
Google Gemini
Google's primary AI assistant. Growing market share.
Microsoft Copilot
Integrated into Windows and Bing. B2B and consumer reach.
Claude
Growing user base. Strong in research and comparison queries.
Built by People Who Take AI Search Seriously
Meet the experts behind our ecommerce AI search optimization agency. Our mission is to help online retailers increase traffic, grow sales, and profits with proven digital marketing strategies.
Greg Shuey
Founder
Greg has spent over 20 years working with ecommerce brands and founded Stryde in 2013. Throughout his career, he saw too many great products struggle not because they weren’t good, but because founders didn’t fully understand search marketing and agencies focused more on deliverables than revenue.
Greg built Stryde with one clear mission: help ecommerce brands grow through search strategies that actually drive revenue, not just traffic. He believes ecommerce marketing should be measurable, transparent, and aligned with real business goals.
Outside of work, Greg is a dedicated family man who values time with his wife and 3 kids. He brings that same long-term commitment and care into every client partnership.
Built By Ecommerce People
Each of our team members has a deep passion for working with e-commerce & direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands and knows what it takes to drive search demand through SEO, AEO, and GEO.
Karen Martinez
Katie Anderson
Ann Santigo
Rebeca Treviño
Bruna Etienne
Denisse Araneda
Julia Amodt
Gaby Abdalah
Angela Burks
Ingrid Mallen
Kristin Ravesloot
Recent Blog Posts About Ecommerce AI Search Optimization
Your Competitors Are About to Steal Your AI Search Visibility – YouTube Shorts Is How You Beat Them to It
Let’s talk about something most ecommerce brands aren’t paying attention to yet… and it’s going to cost them dearly in the near future. As I’ve talked and written about before, Google’s AI Overviews are rapidly reshaping how shoppers discover products,
Your Shopify Store Just Got a New Storefront – And You Probably Don’t Know About It
Imagine a customer opens ChatGPT, types “I need a gift for a new mom under $50,” and within seconds an AI agent browses, compares, and completes a purchase, without ever visiting a website. No Google search. No clicking through ads.
SEO vs AEO vs GEO: What Ecommerce Brands Need to Know (And Where to Invest)
If you run or are a marketer for an ecommerce brand doing $500K-$5M in revenue, there’s a good chance your marketing strategy still revolves around a familiar playbook: Build product pages Publish blog content (maybe????) Earn backlinks Rank on Google
FAQs About Ecommerce AI Search Optimization
What is ecommerce AI search optimization?
Ecommerce AI search optimization is the practice of positioning your online store’s products, brand, and content to appear in AI-powered search experiences like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other large language model-driven platforms.
Instead of optimizing solely for traditional blue-link search results, AI search optimization focuses on getting your brand recommended and referenced when AI systems generate answers to shopping-related queries.
When a shopper asks an AI tool something like “what’s the best moisturizer for dry skin under $40,” the AI pulls from a range of sources to generate a synthesized answer, often recommending specific products and brands.
Ecommerce AI search optimization is about making sure your products and brand are part of that answer. This involves optimizing your site’s content structure, product information, reviews, FAQ content, and topical authority so that AI models recognize your brand as a credible, relevant source worth citing.
This matters now more than ever because AI-driven search is rapidly changing how consumers discover and evaluate products. Shoppers are increasingly getting product recommendations from AI before they ever see a traditional search result or click an ad.
Brands that don’t optimize for this new discovery layer risk becoming invisible to a growing segment of high-intent buyers.
How is ecommerce AI search optimization different than regular AI search optimization?
Regular AI search optimization tends to focus on informational visibility, getting a brand or website cited when AI tools answer general knowledge questions, industry topics, or service-related queries.
Ecommerce AI search optimization is specifically focused on product discovery and purchase intent, which introduces a completely different set of optimization priorities.
The biggest difference is the role of product data. Ecommerce AI search optimization requires deep attention to product-level content: detailed and accurate product descriptions, structured data and schema markup, customer reviews, comparison content, and collection-level information that helps AI systems understand what you sell, who it’s for, and how it stacks up against alternatives. Regular AI search optimization rarely needs to go this deep into SKU-level detail.
There’s also a difference in the types of queries you’re targeting. Ecommerce AI search optimization focuses on transactional and commercial investigation queries like “best running shoes for flat feet,” “organic baby formula comparison,” and “affordable mid-century modern furniture.”
These are queries where the AI is likely to recommend specific products and brands. Regular AI search optimization is more often targeting informational queries where the goal is thought leadership or brand awareness rather than direct purchase consideration.
Finally, measurement looks different. In ecommerce, you’re ultimately tying AI search visibility back to traffic, revenue, and product-level performance. You need to understand which products are getting recommended, which AI platforms are sending traffic, and how that traffic converts compared to other channels.
How long does ecommerce AI search optimization take to show results?
AI search optimization is a longer-term play than paid search, but shorter than many people expect.
Most ecommerce brands start seeing measurable changes in AI visibility within 30 to 45 days of implementing a focused strategy, though the full impact compounds over six to twelve months as your content footprint and topical authority grow.
In the first 30 days, the work is foundational. You’re auditing your current AI search presence, identifying gaps in your content and structured data, and building out the product-level and category-level content that AI systems need to understand and recommend your brand. During this phase, you may not see dramatic changes in AI citations, but you’re laying the groundwork that everything else builds on.
Between 30 and 60 days, you’ll start seeing your brand appear in AI-generated responses for more queries, particularly if you’ve invested in building strong FAQ content, comparison pages, and product-rich collection pages with proper schema markup. AI models update their knowledge and sourcing regularly, so the content you publish now starts getting picked up and referenced during this window.
After three to six months, the results tend to accelerate. As your site builds topical authority across your product categories, AI systems begin to treat your brand as a go-to source for a wider range of related queries.
The brands that commit to consistent content production and ongoing optimization see the strongest long-term gains, AI search optimization rewards depth and consistency over time.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) are closely related concepts that are often used interchangeably, but there’s a subtle distinction worth understanding.
Both focus on optimizing your content to perform well in AI-powered search environments, but they approach the problem from slightly different angles.
AEO is the broader, more established term. It refers to optimizing your content so that AI-powered answer engines, Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Siri, Alexa, and similar platforms select and surface your content when generating answers to user queries.
AEO has its roots in the earlier shift toward featured snippets and voice search, and it’s evolved to encompass the full range of AI-driven answer experiences. The focus is on making your content the best possible source for AI systems to pull from when constructing a response.
GEO is a newer, more specific term that focuses specifically on generative AI outputs, the responses produced by large language models like those powering ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity. GEO is more narrowly concerned with how these generative models select sources, synthesize information, and attribute recommendations. It tends to emphasize factors like citation patterns, content structure, and the signals that LLMs use to determine which brands and sources to reference.
In practice, the strategies overlap significantly. Whether you call it AEO or GEO, the core work involves building authoritative, well-structured content, earning third-party mentions and reviews, implementing proper schema markup, and establishing your brand as a trusted source within your product categories. For ecommerce brands, the label matters less than the execution; what matters is that your products show up when AI tools are helping shoppers make buying decisions.
How should I measure my ecommerce AI search optimization work?
Measuring AI search optimization is one of the biggest challenges brands face right now because the tracking infrastructure is still catching up to the channel. That said, there are several meaningful ways to gauge whether your efforts are working, even without perfect attribution.
Start with direct visibility monitoring. Regularly query the major AI platforms, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and others, with the types of product and category questions your ideal customers would ask. Track whether your brand is being mentioned, how often, and in what context. This can be done manually or with emerging tools that automate AI citation tracking. It’s not as precise as Google Analytics data, but it gives you a clear directional read on whether your visibility is growing.
Next, watch your branded search volume and direct traffic trends. As your brand gets recommended more frequently by AI tools, you should see an uptick in people searching for your brand name directly and navigating to your site without clicking through a traditional search result. Google Search Console can help you track branded query impressions and clicks over time, and rising branded search is one of the strongest indirect signals that AI search exposure is working.
You should also monitor referral traffic from AI platforms. Perplexity, ChatGPT (when it includes links), and Google AI Overviews can all drive clickthrough traffic to your site. Set up UTM tracking and segment this traffic in your analytics to understand volume, engagement, and conversion rates. Finally, track your overall organic and direct revenue trends alongside your AI search efforts. While it’s difficult to isolate AI search as a single attribution channel today, brands that are winning in AI search consistently see lifts in organic traffic, branded search, and direct revenue that correlate with their optimization efforts.
What industries do you help with AI search optimization?
We focus exclusively on AI search optimization for ecommerce brands, specifically those generating between $1 million and $15 million in annual revenue.
We’ve worked with brands across product categories, including fashion and apparel, baby and kids products, home decor and furnishings, health and wellness, beauty and skincare, outdoor and sporting goods, and specialty food and beverage.
Ecommerce brands are uniquely positioned to benefit from AI search optimization because AI tools are increasingly becoming a part of the product research and purchase journey. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for product recommendations, the AI is essentially acting as a personal shopping assistant, and the brands that show up in those recommendations capture demand that never even touches a traditional search result. Our clients tend to be brands with strong products and proven demand, but they’re realizing that their current marketing mix, typically some combination of Meta ads, Google Ads, and traditional SEO, isn’t enough to stay visible as search behavior shifts toward AI-driven discovery.
If you’re an ecommerce brand selling physical products online and you want to make sure your products are getting recommended when AI tools answer shopping queries in your category, we can help. AI search optimization is still early enough that the brands that invest now will build a significant competitive advantage over those who wait, and our ecommerce specialization means we understand the product-level nuances that generic agencies miss.
Connect with us Today!
Chat with our company owner, Greg Shuey!
He will dig in with you to understand how AI search optimization should be integrated into your growth strategy for your D2C business.