The AI Search Shake-Up and What It Means for Loyalty

Shoppers are not just Googling anymore; they are asking AI. Multiple studies show consumers now use ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for product research, deal-finding, and gift ideas. For example, Adobe found that 39% of U.S. consumers have used generative AI for online shopping, and Bloomreach reports that roughly 60% have used conversational AI to help them shop. The traffic impact is debated and evolving; some coverage points to declines for publishers while Google disputes broad declines. For retailers who own or co-own their loyalty program, this shift can be an edge: high-trust program content and member value can be turned into answer-ready assets that AI surfaces cite and link.

Optimizing for AI: AEO, GEO & AIO

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) means making your content easy for AI engines like Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Google's AI surfaces to understand, cite, and recommend. For primers and playbooks, see Search Engine Land and Forbes.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) focuses on packaging content as direct, unambiguous answers with the right structured data. A detailed overview is available in CXL's guide to AEO.

AI Interaction Optimization (AIO) centers on how AI assistants and agents interpret, route, and act on your content so a shopper's intent is resolved quickly and safely. It emphasizes clear intents and entities, canonical answer snippets, retrieval-grounded responses, and deep links that let users complete tasks such as redeeming points or checking balances. It also adds governance guardrails for brand-safe answers, with analytics and testing to improve answer quality, click-through, and task completion over time.

Make your loyalty program answer-ready

Convert FAQs to crisp Q&A blocks

• Write one question plus one answer with 75 words or fewer
• Include concrete numbers and units such as earn rates, thresholds, and dates
• Mark up with FAQPage or QAPage, and use Google's implementation notes for FAQPage and QAPage

Publish tiers and benefits in tables

• Show earn and burn math, tier thresholds, expiries, and exclusions in simple, scannable tables
• Keep a canonical program math page that bots can crawl reliably
• Use consistent labels and avoid duplicative pages that fragment authority

Expose product and offer data clearly

• Ensure product and promo pages include brand, model, GTIN or UPC, price, availability, and eligibility notes in HTML
• Add Product structured data and align with your Merchant Center feed for maximum coverage

Write how-to redemptions

• Create short step sequences such as how to use points at checkout
• Mark up with HowTo schema when appropriate
• Use Google's intro to structured data as a companion reference

Keep the site fast and crawlable

• Maintain standard technical SEO practices, including accurate robots directives, fresh sitemaps, performant pages, and clean URLs
• Avoid gating core program intel behind heavy interstitials or logins where possible
• For GEO-focused checklists, see Search Engine Land

Loyalty data as an AI differentiator

First-party loyalty data such as purchase history, redemption behavior, and engagement signals can feed AI personalization engines with richer context. This gives loyalty-based offers an advantage over generic suggestions. See evidence that active loyalty communities and well curated engagement improve outcomes in Marketing Dive's study on Gen Z and loyalty communities. For a broader view of how AI is reshaping loyalty strategy, from churn prediction to fraud detection, see Marketing Dive's reporting on AI and loyalty.

Bottom line

In an AI driven search landscape, visibility is not only about page rank. It is about being the chosen answer.