Shopify GEO and AEO audits: get ready for AI search

AI assistants already help customers compare products. Missing information or incorrect answers can rule your store out before someone reaches your website. Meanwhile, competitors with clearer answers have a better chance of being considered.

Organic search remains much larger, so preparing for AI should build on your SEO. Looking further ahead, McKinsey estimates agents could help organise $3 trillion to $5 trillion in global consumer commerce by 2030. Read the report.

Our view for 2027: start now, while there’s time to test, improve and learn. We’ll help you find the gaps without expecting your team to follow every AI announcement.

They overlap, but each helps at a different point in a customer’s search. Imagine you sell water bottles:

The aim is to be found, understood and considered. The same useful information can support all three.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide recommends useful content, descriptive titles, helpful links and pages it can access. Those foundations also apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode; no special AI file is required.

To compete, your pages also need to answer what helps customers choose: who is this for, how does it compare and why trust your store? We investigate those gaps, rather than simply add more words.

An AI assistant helps someone research or buy a product. They might ask: “Find a fragrance free moisturiser under £30 that can arrive this week.” The assistant compares options and, where supported, helps them towards checkout.

Shopify supports discovery through ChatGPT and documents shopping channels including Google AI Mode, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot. Checkout options vary by channel and store eligibility. See Shopify’s current guidance.

That makes accurate product details and a working buying journey important before customers reach your homepage. We can test the relevant steps without placing an order.

We can check ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, alongside Google Search. Copilot or Claude can be included where useful. We choose the relevant platforms with you.

• Whether you appear. We test questions about your brand and category, record mentions and compare the competitors recommended.
• Whether answers are accurate. We check responses and their sources against your products, policies and services.
• What search tools can find. We review content, internal links, product information and country versions of your store.
• Whether agents can shop. We test relevant product, subscription and basket steps, without completing a purchase.
• What your data shows. Available visits, landing pages and conversion data help us connect findings to your business.

You receive the results, not just a checklist. We record the test context because answers can change by platform, date and location.

We prioritise changes that affect customers and how search or AI tools understand your store. For example, a country storefront blocked from search can matter more than polishing a page that already answers customers well.

Each job includes the evidence, why it matters, the recommended fix, who can help and an estimate. You can see the detail in the sample report, then choose a manageable starting point.

You know things an AI tool cannot safely guess. We help turn that knowledge into useful content:

• Product facts: ingredients, materials, suitability, care and differences between products.
• Evidence: for a formulation brand, ingredient research and finished product testing. Research on one ingredient does not automatically prove a claim about the finished product.
• Customer insight: questions your support team hears, genuine reviews and expert explanations.

Google recommends original, helpful content with clear expertise and sources. It has no preferred word count. Read its helpful content guidance.

The online plan keeps the work, decisions and progress together. Your team and ours each know what to do:

We can provide this support or work alongside your existing team. Checking every product, page and source takes time; we handle that investigation and bring you the decisions that need your input.

The goal is to get your store considered when customers ask what to buy, and help those visits convert. We record a starting point, then can repeat the same questions to compare mentions, prominence and accuracy. We also check search visibility and the relevant product and basket steps.

The review below shows how we can track progress with ongoing support. AI answers vary and some visits cannot be traced to their source, so we explain what the evidence supports. No agency can guarantee first place in every chat.

We work with Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus stores, and can discuss a focused review for Starter. We also support headless stores, including Hydrogen, where the customer website is built separately from a Shopify theme. We adapt the checks to your setup.