GEO (The Brand Ambassador You Never Hired)

Borrowed

"One biotechnological advancement at a time, this world is coming, and fast... The most critical daily decisions that affect how long we live are centered around the foods we eat. If your blood sugar is high at breakfast, you'll know to avoid sugar in your morning coffee. If your body is low on iron at lunch, you'll know it and can order a spinach salad to compensate... Your personal virtual assistant — the same AI-driven being who answers your internet search queries and reminds you about your next meeting — will point you to the nearest restaurant that has what you need or offer to have it delivered to wherever you are."

From Lifespan by David Sinclair [Book]*

*Published in 2019, before any of us were talking about ChatGPT. At the time it probably read like science fiction. Today it reads like a product roadmap.

Learned

Many of my calls at Barrel each week are with retail-first CPG brands. Last week I had three. These are not DTC brands growing into retail. These are brands where shelf space makes up most of the business. For them, getting into Whole Foods, Costco, or Target (and staying and growing) defines success. And as they've grown, their websites often becomes afterthoughts.

That’s usually why they’ve reached out. They know a strong website is no longer about selling online. It’s about having a presence that represents who a brand is and where it’s going, consistent across the website and other digital channels like email and marketplaces.

And in almost every one of those conversations, the same topic eventually surfaces: GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), or AI Search. Whatever term you use, they all refer to the same thing: how visible a brand is when customers search for related prompts in AI chat tools.

It’s no longer a new, interesting area to explore. It’s a must. A few reasons why:

Shopify announced that millions of merchants are now discoverable inside ChatGPT through their catalog integration. Walmart launched an in-ChatGPT app experience, bringing its inventory and loyalty program directly into AI conversations. Google, Shopify, Walmart, and Target co-developed a Universal Commerce Protocol to enable AI tools to move shoppers from discovery to purchase without leaving the conversation. The infrastructure is being built fast, changing every day, and players like this are betting on it.

But maybe the most important driver is something harder to quantify. The line between “digital” and “life” has essentially disappeared. It’s no longer a separate channel. If you ask me, it hasn’t been for a while now. You get a latte at your local cafe and earn loyalty points via text. You use your Apple Wallet to checkout at the grocery store. Digital is just part of how people move through the real world. And increasingly, that means asking an AI tool before making a decision, whether about home projects, health, purchases, products, or brands. All of it.

So when a parent is deciding between two better-for-you snacks, they’re not always waiting until they’re in the aisle. They’re asking ChatGPT before they leave the house. And here’s what makes that different from a Google search: the AI probably already knows who they are. It knows their dietary preferences, their kids’ ages, and what they’ve asked about before. It’s not returning ten blue links and letting them sort it out. It’s giving a personalized answer, in plain language, with a recommendation that feels tailored to them.

That’s not a search result. It’s more like a brand ambassador who knows the customer.

The uncomfortable part for brands: no one hired them. No one briefed them. No one can approve what they say. But customers trust them completely, in part because the AI has earned that trust by being genuinely useful in so many other parts of their lives.

So the question isn't whether GEO matters for retail brands. It clearly does, even if a brand never sells a single thing on its own website. The question is whether the spokesperson is being trained or left to figure it out on their own.

That starts with the website, but it doesn't end there. It's the one surface a brand fully owns and controls. The place where the story can be told completely, accurately, and on its own terms. What lives there is what AI agents read. And what they read is what gets repeated back to customers in those conversations.

The tactics follow from there: evolving content, structured data, FAQ strategy, and earned mentions across the web. There's real work involved, and it's exciting to be in the middle of it. But without a strong website at the core, none of it holds. It's like building on a rocky foundation. Everything on top is harder to sustain.

& Thought

Where are AI agents already guiding the decisions I make every day?