Hey everyone. Scott Austin here. And, this week I wanted to talk about a topic that is really important, especially for e-commerce stores, and that is how AI is changing the world of SEO or search engine optimization. And I'm not an expert in, I don't know, what we call, you know, SEO for. I we're going to find that out in this conversation.

I'm not an expert in that topic. So I want to invite somebody who was. So I invited Tanner Larsen to talk to us about AI and how it's affecting e-commerce. Welcome, Tanner.

Can you tell us a little?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the way I look at that is, you know, we all understand SEO today, but now we have to think about this new thing. In addition to SEO and that whatever that term is going to be, that hopefully you're going to tell me about here in a minute. But before we dig into that, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and why we should be listening to you?

Yeah, absolutely. And

as we talk about AI and e-commerce, you have a term that refers to how to optimize your store for the world of AI. It does one exist in the industry at.

Yeah, that. That makes sense. So, you know, and whatever we end up that term being, you know, five years from now, we'll be different, you know, from what it is today. Like I was in MSN, you know, Microsoft back in the day, we had messenger and we had emoticons. And I thought emoticons was a great term. And then they became emoji one day.

And now nobody even thinks of emoticons anymore. It's all emoji kind of stuff. But

I this thing that's happened into e-commerce

and can you give us you mentioned you have some stats. Can you give us some stats on how quickly the world of finding commerce stores is changing for consumers because of AI?

is, Yep.

I. I have seen the changes in my client store. We can see the, you know, the the SEO traffic going down and nothing else. Everyone. Scott Austin here. And, this week I wanted to talk about a topic that is really important, especially for e-commerce stores. And that is how AI is changing the world of SEO or search engine optimization.

And I'm not an expert

I don't know, what we call, you know, SEO for. I we're going to find that out in this conversation. I'm not an expert in that topic. So I want to invite somebody who was. So I invited Tanner Larsen to talk to us about AI and how it's affecting e-commerce. Welcome, Tanner.

Can you tell us a little.

way I look at that is, you know, we all understand SEO today, but now we have to think about this new thing.

to SEO and that whatever that term is going to be, that hopefully you're going to tell me about here in a minute.

that, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and why we should be listening to you?

Yeah, absolutely. And as we talk about AI and e-commerce, you have a term that refers to how to optimize your store for the world of AI. It does one exist in the industry at.

Yeah, that. That makes sense. So, you know, and whatever we end up that term being, you know, five years from now, we'll be different, you know, from what it is today, like, I was in MSN, you know, Microsoft back in the day, we had messenger and we had emoticons. And I thought emoticons was a great term. And then they became emoji one day.

And now nobody even thinks of emoticons anymore. It's all emoji kind of stuff. But you know, I this thing that's happened into e-commerce and can you give us you mentioned you have some stats. Can you give us some stats on how quickly the world of finding commerce stores is changing for consumers? Because of AI?

That is, Yep. I. I have seen the changes in my client store. We can see the, you know, the the SEO traffic going down, and nothing else has changed. Where, like, you know, my assumption has always been. Well, I think AI is taking the share of, of that research level that consumers are doing. But I hadn't seen that data.

So that is

fascinating. And I assume it's only going to get worse

depending how you look at it.

Yeah.

So you just used a term that I loved, and it was non AI visible stores. So I was going to do a little more background talk, but you know, now let's dive in. What is a non AI visible store

And how does one become an AI visible store.

Yep.

Oh, no. No.

I would have

assumed. And this is. You know. You know. You know, the old adage about assumptions is true here, I guess. But I would have assumed that the AI engines were going to use the same structured data that all of our. You in Shopify, at least, you know, all the themes basically give you the structured data. You don't have to add your Json files that we used to have two, five, six years ago kind of thing.

They all just take care of that organically in the themes and have a data layer. But it sounds to me like what you're saying is either the technology different or the data is structured in a different way because

it's doing different things with it. So you need a new data layer

in addition, is that accurate? Yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

You know.

Yep.

Yep.

And that makes a lot of

sense. Because the the I.

You know, what I love about

AI is it's great at assimilating huge, massive amounts of data to give you the most, you know, appropriate answer kind of thing. So you need to give it all the data about the product, because the way it works in SEO is it would just say, hey, here's a bunch of things that kind of match your your for keyword query kind of thing instead of your 30 keyword query.

So now you have to give it more data to be able to differentiate the nuances of your products. Now, if if

a store owner today wants to do that test that your your client you were talking about early on when they searched in AI and said, oh, we don't show up at all. How would I go into like ChatGPT

and just do a little check to see that I'm actually failing?

Like, like I probably am, but how can I verify that?

Yep.

Yep. Search for your product title exactly the way you put it in. Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah. No. I was thinking the exact same terms. Right. I was just about to say. Yeah, it's

table stakes

at the same time. And I totally agree with you. With any new technology

is. Right.

mover advantage is a short term advantage.

But you get to benefit it, benefit from it for that period of time, right? For example, when I

and I was working with a

couple of my game

developers and the couple of developers that changed their game at the last

work with

avatars, you know, so like five x, the sales they were expecting, because we rolled out avatars and customers wanted to use their avatars, and there was only 4 or 5 games that had avatars in them.

So

those games, whether they like those games or not kind of thing. So that that early mover

advantage. But it is definitely an advantage, especially if you know it's going to become defacto. You got to do it anyways.

We.

We will.

will

Yeah. You. You. What I hear you saying is that that benefits not just a short term benefit. It may give you an unfair advantage. Being the first mover, because you have more history and more clicks. Therefore, you look more popular.

Yep.

Yep. So how can a Shopify store today? Who wants to get in on the game now in 2025? What do they need to do to be visible to AI?

Yep.

So when you say the meta fields in that situation, do you mean all the custom fields you may add? Or do you mean all the predefined ones that are for Google that Shopify sets

up for you?

Okay.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

The fascinating thing is you're seeing all this, right? You know, at first, I was thinking

of things and data enrichment, and I love data enrichment. And I think, you know, all stores should enrich their product data as much as possible. The flip side of that, though, is the power we're now giving to consumers.

back to your I'm looking for a, you know, thermos mug that fits inside my model. Why like

that is not possible

today. Right now it is like when you look for a cell phone case. Is this a great example or are you going to Amazon today? You search for a cell phone case. You told the exact model you have.

It gives you the exact cell phone case that fits that exact model. But that is

not true. And so

much of e-commerce today. But that's the power of AI is they can find the one product that,

not that. It's the one product that fits in the model

Y. It's the one product that says it fits in the model Y, right.

And you have to say these things right. So it's a much,

much, much deeper level of understanding.

What are the important criteria for the customers when they're looking at and comparing your product, you have to understand the nuances

to a much greater degree.

also

Yep.

Yeah. What I hear you saying is the SEO best practices. Let's say you have,

Bronco, how to wash a Ford Maverick, how to wash

1963 Camaro. Right. All those different combinations. In the future, you'll just take all of that data. Ford Mustang, Ford Bronco, 63 Camaro and put that into the product page, at least at the structured data level.

Maybe also shown on the front end of it kind of thing. So you're just going to have a deeper product page instead of broadening

out

pages, blogs, articles. What we're doing in the past.

Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Yes. Because of that, trusted sources said this is the product that maps to your needs. You don't have to do all that research. I've

for you. I

how that makes sense. Yeah. Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I totally see that. And I think, you know, most of the audience that's listening, right? They're small

store owners. I bet you if they even listen to me. I think I've done six episodes an I buy now. They should be. Just like you said, we're all using AI every day.

This is just one of those scenarios

that's going to be a no brainer in the very near future, because it's great at what I does because I, as we know, sucks when you ask it.

You

assimilating data. And this is just assimilating data, finding all the different

put in and

that map to that. So.

Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Yep. Yes.

Yeah. No. It's super powerful. So. Yeah. Like to me. No brainer. Like everybody listening should understand this is coming. And these scenarios are going to be coming more and more real very quickly. How do we today add this data layer or augment the data layer that's there with this level of information is that do we do a different app?

Is it custom code or do we just do meta fields? What are the techniques we need to think about adopting?

I haven't run into a cap, and I have products where we have 50 to 60 meta field, so I doubt there's a cap.

Yep.

Yep. Yep.

So, as one

example, the. You know, you had a scenario of compatibility. This works with the Tesla model Y type thing. I can see in the future where there's going to be in

a structured data format, it's going to say compatibility information. It should be stored under this. You know,

field or setting or whatever we want to.

But today, I assume right now what they're doing is the AI is going out finding the data that exists

probably compatibility because it says compatibility or it says compatible or compatible with. So there's no

data. As long as you structure

Okay.

Yep, yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Was it industry-standardized or standardized with the one I partner. You know. Yep. Okay.

They're not competing right now. They're collaborating which is good to hear. Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah. It's the same thing that happened in the SEO world. You probably remember where, you know, we we had a whole bunch of best practices, and then Google came out and said, here's what we want Json to look like. It's these fields and this information in it. And it's all standardized

now. And like today, you can go into your

Google Channel and Shopify

the Google Merchant feed.

And you can just see all the

meta fields listed out and you can fill the data

in, you know, it'll mature and get to that point, but it's going to be a while before it gets to that level. I'm sure.

Yeah, well, you only get to be Google when you're the dominant force, right? Google didn't do that stuff in 2000, when it was just starting to emerge as dominant and search it was until it got 98% market share, you know, which took another ten years or whatever before it could do those things. So as long as there's competition, they're going to cooperate.

Once somebody becomes more than 50% market share. And this is my guess, is then they're going to try to be strategically different and leverage their monopoly power. Right. It's the same thing that happened. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep, yep. Like, you know I was mentioning before I was back in MSN, you know, back in the messenger days and there was messenger, there was Aim and there was

Yahoo messenger and there was IQ

also.

And none of them talk to each other because they're all like, we're going to be the number one. We don't want to be compatible. And when the nobody came became dominant, they started collaborating a little bit more and interchange worked. And then, you know, SMS destroyed it all. But,

IQ was number one in Brazil for the longest time. Brazil was one of the markets I supported. And it was like the last place where IQ existed. And it held on till like probably 2009, 2010. But yeah. Oh yeah, they they would. Brazil was an island in the internet back in the early 2000. But, so small brands had a hard time catching

usual.

But you know, what I want to do is for summarizing

some best practices for them to think about. I think the first one is go get your tool, have them measure themselves to at least see where they sit. Right? And then they can use that tool later on to remeasure. I assume.

Yeah. Yeah. So I, I agree with you there

that the small guys have a technical advantage or a scale advantage where if you've only got a catalog of 25 product, it's not going to be hard to augment the data. The challenge for them is as a, you know, 1 or 2 person owned, you know, managed

advantage for them and a disadvantage. But, you know, once again, the ones that do the work are the ones who are going to benefit from that. So, you know, going back to the way I'm thinking about this for Shopify stores, step one see where you stand and then see where the easy, low hanging fruit gaps are in the data that I want that you can add to your product data, you know, enrich your product data with that information.

And all of a sudden you're going to leapfrog and be a little more visible than you were before and show up in more results, because now you've given, you know, you've spread out across more keywords by putting in that vertical of data on that product, using my SEO thinking there.

You know.

Yep.