How AI is becoming the new front door for retail

AI search referrals to US retail sites surged 1,300% during the 2024 holiday season. AJ Ghergich, Global VP at Botify, brings enterprise-level expertise in helping major retailers navigate the shift from keyword-based discovery to conversational AI interfaces that now serve as the primary gateway to brands. The discussion covers three critical implementation frameworks: establishing proper bot identification and crawling infrastructure to ensure AI systems can render and index retail content, implementing enhanced product feed optimization with structured data to improve AI reasoning capabilities, and developing intent mapping strategies that go beyond basic transactional categorization to align with customer journey touchpoints across conversational search experiences. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.