AI optimization is the practice of optimizing your content so AI-powered platforms can find, understand, and cite it when generating answers. This includes AI search engines like Perplexity and SearchGPT, AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, and AI search features like Google AI Overviews. The goal goes beyond just ranking. AI optimization aims to get your brand mentioned, cited, or recommended in AI search.
Speaking at Oasis Assembly, Dawn Hilarczyk, COO of Borghese, and Hillary Hutcheson, CMO of RoC Skincare, outlined how their teams are adapting to generative engine optimization, or GEO, as AI-driven search increasingly shapes product discovery. Borghese, a more than 70-year-old Italian skin-care brand known for its Fango mud treatments, and RoC, a U.S.-based mass-market clinical brand with deep ties to dermatologist recommendations, are approaching the shift from different angles.
Among the bigger news items was Google's launch of an e-commerce shopping checkout feature directly from Google Search's AI Mode and its Gemini chatbot app. Among the first takers for the new feature is retail behemoth Walmart, so this is a big deal. Behind the scenes, the AI checkout is powered by a new " Universal Commerce Protocol" that should make it easier for retailers to support agentic AI sales.
Accenture is betting that the future of retail will run through AI with an investment in Profitmind, an agent-based platform that automates pricing decisions, inventory management, and planning. "Profitmind bridges the gap between insight and action through agentic AI," Accenture global retail lead Jill Standish said in a statement that announced Accenture's buy in. "It mirrors how retailers run their businesses, linking data from multiple sources for clear, prioritized recommendations that can be trusted and executed quickly in response to an increasingly competitive industry."
