Be the store AI engines cite, and the answer buyers hear.
GEO and AEO are one job: making your store the source AI engines cite inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, and the answer that wins featured snippets, People Also Ask, and voice results. We run both as a single program on one technical foundation, alongside the classic SEO that still drives most of your traffic. Google's own 2026 guidance is blunt about it: optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO.
What an AI engine checks before it cites you.
When an assistant answers a buyer's question, it pulls from sources it can reach, parse, and trust. GEO is the work of making your store pass each of those checks.
Brand recognition and entity resolution.
Models cite sources they can resolve. Consistent Organization data, named authorship, and third-party corroboration turn your brand from an ambiguous string into a known entity an engine will name.
Can it find facts it trusts?
Product, Offer, FAQ, Article, and BreadcrumbList schema, complete and consistent across the catalog. Engines lean on structured data to confirm a price, a spec, or a claim before they repeat it.
Can its crawler even reach you?
Explicit robots.txt allowances for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Googlebot-Extended, plus a maintained llms.txt that tells AI systems what you sell and why you're credible. A blocked crawler is an automatic non-citation.
Content structure that engines can extract.
Engines quote content that answers directly and cites specifics, and most citations are pulled from the opening third of a page. We restructure category, PDP, and guide copy so a model can lift a clear, self-contained answer from the top without guessing.
Is the information current?
AI crawlers re-index often and favor fresh, maintained sources. We keep schema, llms.txt, and key answers up to date so your store stays the version an engine quotes.
Win the answer box and the spoken answer.
Many searches now end at an answer box rather than a click: featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice assistants, and AI Overviews. The same content discipline that earns AI citations also wins these boxes, so we build for both in one pass. Here is what it takes:
- It starts with the questions buyers actually ask. We mine the literal questions buyers type and speak, from People Also Ask, autocomplete, support tickets, and site search, then map each to the page that should own it.
- A question-format heading, then a direct answer in the first 40–60 words, then the depth. That structure is what snippet extraction and AI citation both reward. Most pages bury the answer.
- Mark it up so engines trust it. FAQ, HowTo, and Q&A schema on every answer-bearing page, written in code and validated, so an engine can confirm what your page answers.
- Win the spoken answer too. Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant read out one result, usually the snippet. We tune phrasing to the conversational, spoken-length form voice queries use.
"what size hoist do I need"
Featured snippetFrom audit to measurable AI citation gains.
A typical engagement runs 90 days from kickoff to measurable lift in AI-referrer traffic. The same engineers who write your Avalara integration are the ones implementing your schema.
- Weeks 1–2: Full GEO and answer-box audit, baseline citations and snippets, brand entity audit
- Weeks 3–6: Schema engineering, answer-first content rework on the top 100 pages, AI-bot policy
- Weeks 7–10: Entity linking, knowledge graph submissions, citation outreach
- Weeks 11–12: Measurement, AI-referrer tracking, monthly reporting cadence locked in
AI-referrer traffic — 90 days
LiveWe engineer for citations, and we track whether they land.
Our AI-search practice runs on AI engineering. We build custom AI apps, we built our own Gemini-powered AI Site Auditor, and this site meets the same standard we sell, with llms.txt, full schema coverage, and explicit AI crawler access.
- Organization data, authorship, and corroboration turn your brand into an entity models will name.
- Schema written in code. We ship structured data straight into your Stencil theme, where most BigCommerce stores leave gaps.
- Citation tracking, not proxy metrics. Each month we query the engines your buyers use and report whether you got cited, and who got cited instead.
- We dogfood it. Every fix we sell is already shipped on this site, so we know what moves citation share.
GEO Visibility Report — example.com
─────────────────────────────────────
ChatGPT citations (30d) 2 ⚠ low
Perplexity citations (30d) 0 ✗ none
AI Overviews appearances 1 ⚠ low
Product schema coverage 31% ✗
FAQ schema coverage 0% ✗
llms.txt missing ✗
AI crawler access GPTBot blocked ✗
Verdict: competitors are being cited
for queries you should own.Frequently asked questions
What is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?
GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — is the practice of making your store the source AI assistants cite when they answer buyer questions inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. Classic SEO optimizes for ranked link lists; GEO optimizes for being selected as a source in a synthesized answer. The signals overlap heavily, and Google's 2026 guidance treats optimizing for AI search as still SEO, so we run them on one technical foundation rather than as separate programs.
Where does AEO fit, and is it separate from GEO?
AEO — Answer Engine Optimization — targets answer surfaces inside traditional search: featured snippets, People Also Ask, and voice results. GEO targets citations inside generated AI answers. They share one technical foundation (question research, answer-first structure, and schema), so we run them as a single program rather than billing two. The same answer-first page that wins a snippet is the one an AI engine quotes.
Can a lower-ranked page still win the answer box?
Yes. The answer box is awarded on answer quality and structure, not position alone, so a page sitting at position three can hold the snippet over the page ranked first. That is the core of the work: the right heading, a complete answer in the first 40–60 words, and schema the engine can read.
Does this replace SEO?
No. It extends it. Google still drives most ecommerce discovery, and AI engines themselves lean on traditional crawl and ranking signals, so a store with weak SEO fundamentals will struggle to win citations or answer boxes. We run all of it on one technical foundation.
How do you measure results?
Monthly citation and answer tracking: we run your priority buyer queries through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews and record whether you're cited, who is cited instead, and which snippets and People Also Ask boxes you own — alongside Search Console's generative-AI performance report, schema coverage, and AI crawler health.
How fast does it show results?
Faster than classic SEO in many cases. AI crawlers re-index frequently, and fixing blocked crawlers, missing schema, or absent llms.txt can change citation behavior within weeks. If you already rank on page one for a question, restructuring the answer and adding schema can capture the snippet within weeks of re-crawling. Competitive citation share for high-value queries builds over 2–4 months.
Doesn't winning a snippet just mean zero-click searches?
Sometimes, and that is still your brand giving the answer instead of a competitor's. In practice, snippets for commercial questions drive strong click-through, because the answer establishes trust and the buyer wants the full detail. We prioritize questions with buying intent, where the click follows the answer.
Do you only do this for BigCommerce stores?
BigCommerce is our deepest specialty, but this work is platform-agnostic — we run programs for Shopify, Magento, WordPress/WooCommerce, and headless stores as well.
Get a free technical audit of your BigCommerce store.
A real assessment from an engineer, delivered in 1 business day:
- One-page snapshot: BigCommerce health, performance, and UX flags
- AI-readiness / GEO score: how visible you are to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews
- Your 3 highest-leverage fixes, prioritized by revenue impact
Prefer to talk first? Call directly: 877.696.3475
Custom ecommerce engineering, AI apps, and SEO — typically 60–80% less than traditional agency pricing.
20+ years of BigCommerce engineering, now AI-augmented. Tell us your store, your stack, and your deadline — we quote fixed scope on the first call.