The rules of search are changing — and fast. A recent report from Microsoft Advertising, From Discovery to Influence: A Guide to AEO and GEO, lays out a clear picture of where things are heading. AI-powered assistants like Copilot, ChatGPT, and Gemini aren't just answering questions anymore — they're recommending products, comparing options, and even completing purchases on behalf of users.
The shift is fundamental. As the report puts it: "If SEO focused on driving clicks, AEO is focused on driving clarity with enriched, real-time data. GEO helps establish credibility through authoritative voice. Together, AEO and GEO establish your brand as a relevant, trusted shopping partner."
For businesses that have invested in SEO, the good news is you're not starting from scratch. But you do need to evolve. Here are five actionable things you should be doing right now.
This is the foundation everything else builds on. AI systems need to read your content programmatically, and structured data is how you make that happen.
Microsoft's report is specific about what's needed: "Deploy Product, Offer, AggregateRating, Review, Brand, ItemList, and FAQ schema types." Beyond the basics, you should be including dynamic fields like price, availability, color, size, SKU, GTIN, and dateModified in your markup.
The key technical detail most businesses miss is that you need to "ship JSON-LD with correct types and attributes to help browsers understand page entities." This isn't optional garnish on top of your HTML — it's the primary way AI systems understand what your pages are actually about.
For businesses running content management systems, this means building structured data output directly into your templates so every product page, category page, and content page automatically generates the right schema. Use ItemList markup for collections and category pages so AI understands how your products relate to each other, not just what they are individually.
Here's where AEO diverges most sharply from traditional SEO. When someone asks an AI assistant a question, the system interprets it as an intent — not a keyword match. The difference matters.
The report illustrates this perfectly with a simple comparison. A traditional SEO approach targets "waterproof rain jacket." An AEO approach describes a "lightweight, packable waterproof rain jacket with stuff pocket, ventilated seams and reflective piping." A GEO approach goes further: "Best-rated waterproof jacket by Outdoor magazine, no-hassle returns allowed for 180 days, three year warranty, 4.8 star rating."
The actionable takeaway: "Front-load descriptions with benefits: who it's for, what problem it solves, what makes it better." Add clear use-case context that AI can match directly to conversational queries — things like "best for day hikes above 40 degrees" or "ideal for three-season camping."
You should also be creating what the report calls "modular, citable content" — Q&A blocks, comparison tables, and structured spec sheets that AI systems can reason over and quote directly in their responses. Think of it this way: if an AI assistant can't extract a clean, citation-worthy answer from your content, it will find one from a competitor who made it easier.
AI systems don't just look at one data source. They cross-reference your product feeds, your structured markup, and your rendered page content — and inconsistencies erode trust.
The report is direct about this: "Maintain consistent values across feed, on-site schema, and user-facing displays. Ensure rendered DOM contains the same facts consumers see — never serve different HTML to bots."
This means your pricing, inventory, promotions, and product details need to be synchronized in real time between your product feeds (like Microsoft Merchant Center) and your on-site schema. If your feed says a product is $179 but your site shows $199, or your feed shows "in stock" but the product page says "backordered," you're actively undermining your visibility in AI-powered recommendations.
The report specifically calls out including "explicit start/end dates for promotions and limited-time offers" in your structured data. AI systems use freshness signals to determine relevance, and a promotion without clear date boundaries is a promotion an AI assistant can't confidently recommend.
For businesses with multi-region operations, this extends to localized data as well — the report advises expressing "localized pricing and language via inLanguage and priceCurrency" in your markup.
This is where GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — really comes into play. AI systems don't just surface content; they prioritize trustworthy content. And they're getting better at distinguishing genuine authority from marketing fluff.
The report identifies three categories of trust signals that matter:
Verified social proof. Include reviews marked with proper Review and AggregateRating schema. Go beyond star ratings — surface review sentiment that enables natural-language recommendations. The report suggests structuring reviews so AI can generate statements like "highly rated for comfort and fit" rather than just "4.5 stars."
Authoritative brand identity. Link to expert reviews and articles where your products are featured. Surface certifications, sustainability badges, and partnerships "as factual entities" — meaning structured data, not just badge images. Think "Certified B Corp" and "Climate Neutral Certified" expressed in machine-readable markup, not just logos in your footer.
Content integrity. The report warns businesses to "avoid exaggerated or unverifiable claims — AI systems penalize low-trust language." This is a significant shift. Superlative marketing copy that might work on a human browser can actually hurt you in AI-powered discovery. If you claim you're "the best" without third-party validation backing it up, AI systems may deprioritize you in favor of competitors with more verifiable claims.
This is the action item most businesses aren't thinking about yet — and it may be the most important one in the near term.
AI agents don't just read your site. They interact with it. The report describes a scenario where an AI agent visits a retailer's site and can see "video showing how they stay dry during rainstorms," "current promotion: free water bottle with purchase," "detailed reviews mentioning great for hiking trips," and "real-time delivery estimate: arrives by Friday."
Then comes the critical part. If the user decides to purchase, the agent handles the transaction directly: it adds to cart, applies promo codes, calculates shipping, completes payment, and provides order confirmation. The report makes the stakes clear: "Without your live site working properly, the sale fails even if your feed and crawled data were perfect."
This means your entire e-commerce flow — from product pages to cart to checkout — needs to function without requiring human workarounds or visual-only cues. Dynamic content like promotions, delivery estimates, and inventory status need to be accessible in the rendered DOM, not hidden behind JavaScript that only fires on hover or click interactions.
It also means your site performance and uptime matter more than ever. If an AI agent tries to complete a purchase and encounters errors, slow loads, or broken flows, that's not just a lost sale — it's a signal to the AI system that your site isn't reliable for future recommendations.
The competition is shifting from discovery to influence. It's no longer enough to rank well in a list of blue links. Your business needs to be the one that AI systems understand, trust, and confidently recommend when users ask for help.
The report's conclusion captures it well: "Retailers already hold most of the data signals that influence Copilot and Bing ranking — they're just not surfaced in product feeds. By enriching feeds and content assets with attributes and trust-based data, retailers can help Copilot understand not just what the product is, but why users love it and when it performs best."
The work isn't about starting over. It's about enriching what you already have — your product data, your content, your site experience — so that the next generation of search can actually use it. The businesses that move on this now will have a significant head start as AI-powered shopping becomes the default, not the exception.
The Microsoft Advertising report referenced throughout this article, "From Discovery to Influence: A Guide to AEO and GEO," is available as a free PDF download.