Get found in Google, and named by the assistants
A growing share of product discovery now starts as a question to ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity rather than a search in Google. The assistants recommend stores they can read, trust and quote. Most Shopify stores fail all three tests, not because the products are wrong but because the site was built for a reader that works differently. Google still matters, and I do both.
You are probably here because one of these is true.
- Organic traffic has been flat for a year while your paid costs keep rising.
- You have asked an assistant which brand to buy in your category, and it did not name you.
- Your product information lives in images, tabs and scripts that nothing but a browser can read.
- Structured data was installed by an app and nobody has checked whether it is valid or true.
- Content is written for a keyword rather than for the question a customer actually asks.
- You do not know whether your store is blocking the crawlers that feed these systems.
What I actually do.
Make the store readable. Product, price, stock, delivery and returns information available as text a machine can parse, not locked in an image or rendered only by a script. If it cannot be read, it cannot be recommended.
Get the structured data right. Product, offer, review, question and organisation markup that is present, valid and consistent with what the page actually says. Most stores have markup that contradicts the page, which is worse than having none.
Answer the questions people ask. Content shaped around what a customer wants to know before buying, in a form an assistant can quote back accurately. This is also what earns the comparison searches in Google, so the two jobs are one job.
Build the trust signals. Reviews, returns policy, delivery terms and a real contact route, findable and readable. A recommendation engine checks these before it puts its name to you, much as a careful customer would.
Check who you are letting in. Crawl access, robots rules and rendering, for Google and for the crawlers that feed the assistants. Accidental blocking is more common than deliberate blocking, and it is a ten minute fix that most stores never make.
Keep the fundamentals honest. Technical health, site speed, internal linking and the ordinary search work that still decides most organic traffic. The new systems have not replaced Google, and the report will not pretend they have.
The first ninety days.
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Weeks one to four
The readiness check run properly, a full technical and content audit, and structured data fixed across every template. The blocking and readability problems go first, because they are cheap and they gate everything else.
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Weeks five to eight
Product and collection content rebuilt around the questions customers ask, trust signals made findable, and the first tracking of how the assistants describe you against how you want to be described.
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Weeks nine to twelve
Content extended to the comparison and research searches in your category, results measured in Google and in the assistants, and the next quarter's list built on what moved.
+46%
traffic year on year at Smiffys, and it converted, with revenue up thirty percent alongside it.
Traffic growth is only worth having if it buys something, and here it did. Before that I was Head of Search Marketing at The Whole Caboodle, and before that Head of Digital at Robot Creative running client ecommerce builds from brief to launch, so I understand the technical side of this well enough to brief a developer and check the work. I have been improving how machines read stores since well before it had a name. The free readiness check on this site is the audit engine I built to do it.
The full track recordTwo things I will not do.
I will not sell you AI visibility as a separate product from search. It is the same discipline aimed at a second reader, and anybody selling it as a bolt-on is charging twice for one job.
I will not write content for a keyword that nobody types. Every page has to answer a question a real customer asks, or it is not going on your site.
Questions.
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Is this different from ordinary SEO?
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It is ordinary SEO with the bar raised. Everything that makes a store readable and trustworthy to an assistant also helps it in Google, and the fundamentals still decide most of the traffic. The difference is that the assistants are less forgiving of missing or contradictory information.
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How do you measure it?
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Organic traffic and revenue in Google as usual, and for the assistants, a tracked set of the questions your customers ask, checked regularly for whether you are named and how you are described. It is less precise than a rank tracker and it is still measurable.
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Where do I start?
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Run the free readiness check. It takes two minutes, scores your store across six areas and tells you what is failing and what it is likely to be costing you. There is no call at the end of it unless you want one.
Other services
Ask an assistant which brand to buy in your category.
If it did not name you, run the free check, or send me the store and I will tell you in twenty minutes why not.