Showing Up in ChatGPT: What AEO Really Means for Small Businesses
AEO, AI Visibility, and What Actually Matters for Small Businesses Right Now
If you’ve been following recent conversations around SEO and AI, you’ve likely seen the term AEO — AI Engine Optimization.
At a high level, AEO is about one thing:
Making sure your business, products, and services can be understood and surfaced by AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
That’s not speculative.
That’s already happening.
And serious companies are forming around this shift.
We’ve Looked Closely at AEO Tools Like Profound
One of the most credible companies in the AEO space right now is Profound (tryprofound.com).
They are a well-funded company valued at approximately $35 million Series B, with investors by big names like Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, focused on helping brands understand how their products and services appear inside large language models.
We’ve met directly with the Profound team on behalf of clients to understand how they approach AI visibility, what signals they track, and where they believe this ecosystem is headed.
That experience matters, because it confirms something important:
AEO is not theoretical — it’s being taken seriously by operators, investors, and enterprise teams.
The core idea behind Profound is sound:
If AI systems are influencing discovery, businesses should understand how their products and brand are represented inside those systems.
Where nuance matters is how that visibility translates into outcomes today.
What AI Visibility Means in Practice (Right Now)
People are increasingly using tools like ChatGPT to ask questions such as:
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“What tools should I use for X?”
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“How do companies usually solve Y?”
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“What are good options for Z?”
In those moments, AI systems may:
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reference products
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describe categories
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explain approaches
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shape how users think about solutions
That influence is real.
What’s still evolving is the business feedback loop:
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how consistently AI visibility drives traffic
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how often it leads to direct leads or purchases
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how clearly it can be measured and optimized
This doesn’t diminish the importance of AEO — it simply reflects where the technology is today.
The Practical Advantage Most Businesses Already Have
Here’s the part many businesses underestimate:
If your website and products are already clearly structured, you are far closer to AEO readiness than you think.
AI systems don’t read websites the way people do.
They rely on:
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structure
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consistency
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clean data
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predictable formats
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accurate descriptions
This is where Shopify becomes a major advantage.
Why Shopify Quietly Sets You Up for AI Discovery
Shopify enforces good structure by design:
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Products use standardized fields
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Pages follow consistent patterns
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Metadata is predictable
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Content is machine-readable
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Commerce data is clean and centralized
This makes it significantly easier for AI systems to:
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understand what you sell
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describe it accurately
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reference it in responses
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surface it in AI-driven discovery experiences
In practical terms:
Using Shopify already aligns your business with how LLMs consume and interpret information.
You don’t need to rebuild your site or chase specialized AEO tactics to benefit from this.
Where Tools Like Profound Fit Today
Tools like Profound represent an early look at where AEO tooling is heading:
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understanding AI visibility
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identifying gaps
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helping brands prepare for AI-first discovery
For some organizations, especially larger brands or those experimenting early, this level of insight can be valuable.
For many small and mid-sized businesses, however, the largest gains still come from:
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clear positioning
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strong SEO fundamentals
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clean site architecture
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modern platforms like Shopify
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high-quality content and user experience
These investments improve search visibility today while positioning businesses well for AI-driven discovery tomorrow.
Our Recommendation
AEO is real.
AI discovery is real.
Companies like Profound are proof that this space matters.
But right now, the most effective strategy for most businesses is not chasing specialized AEO tactics.
It’s building clear, structured, modern foundations that AI systems already understand.
If your products are well defined, your site is clean, and you’re using a platform like Shopify, you are already positioned far better than most — even as AI-driven discovery continues to evolve.
That’s the approach we take.
And it’s the one we recommend.
