AI Search, Shopify & the New Rules of SEO (Part 1)
- Crystal Waddell
- Oct 28
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 29
A Conversation About AI Search, Shopify and Featuring Garrett Sussman on the Simple & Smart SEO Show
Are keywords dead?
Is AI search the new front door to your business?
And what the heck is a “query fan-out”?
In this episode of the Simple & Smart SEO Show, Crystal Waddell chats with Garrett Sussman, Director of Marketing at iPullRank, about how artificial intelligence is completely reshaping the rules of SEO.
Especially for Shopify store owners.
From ChatGPT partnerships to brand authority and the future of search visibility, this conversation is packed with insights you can use today to prepare your business for tomorrow.
🎙️ What You’ll Learn in This Episode
Why traditional SEO strategies focused on keywords and rankings are no longer enough
How the Shopify–OpenAI integration could make ChatGPT your next sales channel
The importance of “quality clicks” over quantity in today’s search ecosystem
Why every profile, video, and article is a “raffle ticket” for AI-powered visibility
How to make your site and brand crawlable, indexable, and authoritative
📌 Listen to the full episode for the deep dive and grab your downloadable glossary for quick reference! 👇🏽
📘 Featured Resource For AI Search and Shopify: 🧠 Simple & Smart SEO Glossary
Whether you're new to AI-powered search or just want to make sense of the jargon, here’s a glossary of key terms mentioned in the episode:
🧩 AI Search
Search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overviews that provide answers based on context, not just keywords.
🛍️ Shopify Plus OpenAI Integration
This partnership suggests that ChatGPT may soon recommend Shopify products within chat. This is a major shift in ecommerce shopping!
💸 Affiliate Model
AI tools could earn a commission when they help sell your product. Think: AI-powered affiliate marketing.
📉 Quality Clicks vs. Quantity Clicks
It's not just about traffic anymore — it’s about getting the right clicks that lead to sales or conversions.
🧭 Google Merchant Center
Upload your product data so it appears in Google Shopping and AI-generated recommendations.
🕸️ Shopping Graph
Google’s internal system linking product info, reviews, and listings ... crucial for showing up in AI search.
🔍 Keyword Optimization
Still relevant, but no longer the end-all. Focus on topics and intent.
🧱 Hub and Spoke Model
Build a central content hub supported by related subpages to improve SEO structure and topical authority.
🏙️ Skyscraper Content
Long-form content designed to outrank competitors. Useful, but only when it delivers true value.
🎟️ Raffle Ticket Analogy
Every page, profile, or video = one more chance to be pulled into AI-generated search results.
🧾 Brand Resume
Coined by Jonas Sickler, this means your brand’s footprint across web platforms. Every mention counts.
🏗️ Brand Authority
Built through backlinks, reviews, and consistent content. And now, it's how AI decides who to trust.
🌐 Crawlable / Crawl Budget
If bots can’t read your site, you won’t appear in search. Make it easy for them to access your content.
⚙️ JavaScript
Great for visuals, but too much can hide content from bots. Keep it crawl-friendly.
🧱 Indexing
Search engines must index your content before it can appear in results. If it’s not indexed, it’s invisible.
🧩 Query Fan-Out
When AI generates multiple related searches behind the scenes to deliver better answers.
🧠 Multimodal Search
AI that uses text, images, video, and even voice to answer search queries. Think Google Lens in action.
🤖 Robots.txt
A file that tells bots what to crawl. Blocking too much can tank your visibility.
☁️ Cloudflare
A web host that recently blocked AI bots by default ... possibly preventing Shopify stores from being indexed by AI tools.
🔒 AI Content Scraping
Controversial but common: AI scrapes your site to train models or generate answers. Fair use or theft? The debate continues.
📈 SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)
The pages you see after you search. Your goal? Be at the top.
🔍 AI Overviews (Google)
Google’s AI summary feature that blends info from multiple sites into one smart answer.
🧭 Perplexity
An AI search engine that combines conversational answers with source citations: the future of “trustable” AI results.
🧮 Rand Fishkin / Datos Study
Confirmed: Google still owns 90% of search. So yes, you still need to optimize for it.
🧰 Merchant Feed
Submit structured product data to Google (or OpenAI) for inclusion in AI-powered shopping results.
🧩 LLM (Large Language Model)
The tech behind ChatGPT. These tools are changing how users interact with the web — and with your business.
💡 Final Takeaway For Ranking in AI Search Engines:
"Every page, profile, and mention you create is a signal; another raffle ticket for AI search engines to recognize and recommend your brand." - Garrett Sussman
🚀 Action Steps for Business Owners:
Audit Your Visibility: Look yourself up on Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. What comes up?
Fill Out Your Merchant Feed: Shopify merchants: make sure OpenAI has your product data!
Diversify Your Content: Go beyond blogs. Add product pages, social posts, videos, and reviews.
Check Your Crawl Settings: Is your site visible to bots? If not, fix it.
Build Your Brand Resume: Reddit, LinkedIn, Google Business, Amazon: every profile counts.
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