What if your customers no longer search—but ask?
What if the answers they see in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini decide which product they buy?
Note: According to a recent survey, nearly 60% of American shoppers already use generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini for online shopping tasks, including product research, recommendations, and finding deals, with 65% preferring ChatGPT’s suggestions over traditional search results.
That’s exactly what our client (an eCommerce brand in the U.S.) asked—and answered.
With a focused AI-optimised content and citation strategy, they didn’t just improve rankings. Instead, they were cited by AI platforms, brought in thousands of high-intent users, and converted that traffic into real revenue.
The result?
AI Citations (Visibility Across LLMs)
- Google AI Overview: 222 citations (+164), across 61 pages
- ChatGPT: 112 citations (+112), across 69 pages
- Perplexity: 79 citations (+72), across 48 pages
- Gemini: 64 citations (+64), across 63 pages
- Copilot (Microsoft): 31 citations (+31), across 24 pages
AI Traffic (Users, Engagement, Revenue)
- Total AI Sessions: Grew by 1,085.6%
- New AI Users: Increased by 1,099.6%
- ChatGPT Traffic:
- Total users — Increased by 1,340.7%
- Transactions — Increased by 472.7%
Brand Mentions in ChatGPT
- Growth.Pro Client got 37 mentions (48.7% competitive share) vs top Competitor that got 16 mentions (21.1% share)
What we did (Strategy Breakdown)
Market intelligence indicates that shopping-related prompts in AI tools like ChatGPT have doubled in recent months, reflecting a rapid shift in how consumers begin and navigate product research in ecommerce.
1. AI Citation Engineering
We reverse-engineered how platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity select sources and optimised accordingly. This included:
- Entity markup and brand anchoring.
- Answer-format paragraphs with zero ambiguity.
- External link structure and citation-worthy sentence framing.
2. Multimodal Content Development
We deployed rich content formats to feed every AI modality:
- Image-rich product pages with optimised alt and caption data.
- Video embeds and visual-first layouts (infographics) to support image and video search.
3. AEO + Intent-First Structuring
We wrote not for search engines, but for answers. That meant:
- Preemptively addressing long-tail and comparison questions.
- Building content blocks with trigger phrases (“best for,” “difference between,” “should I choose”).
- Adding FAQ schemas and context-rich headers.
4. Cross-Platform AI Traffic Integration
We monitored performance across:
- ChatGPT (chat.openai.com traffic).
- Gemini and Copilot referrers.
- Perplexity.ai and Microsoft edge integrations.
Takeaway?
This brand didn’t chase vanity metrics. They focused on where modern users get answers and built content worthy of AI recommendation.
The future of eCommerce growth isn’t on Google’s first page. It’s in AI answers.
For more AEO/GEO case studies, visit us at https://www.growth.pro/seo-case-study