Voices
Seminar Recap: Improve Your Discoverability On AI 
Each season at Playtime & Kid’s Hub New York, we team up with Earnshaw’s to host a seminar exploring a relevant subject for brands and buyers. This July, an expert panel dove into the topic of AI shopping. As more consumers turn to artificial intelligence as their personal shoppers, it’s crucial you optimize your website’s discoverability. In this seminar recap by the moderator Jennifer Cattaui (founder of the boutique Babesta), she’ll go deeper into the subject. The same experts from the in-person panel are also back to further explain their tips and tricks. Let’s jump right into this seminar recap as we turn it over to Jennifer!
Imagine yourself a busy parent with a birthday party every weekend, holiday shopping looming, and a child that seems to be growing out of their clothes at record pace. You want to support your local shops but you also have little time to figure it all out.
Think: I’m going to a party this Saturday and I need a unique gift for a one year old boy who’s crazy about Dachshunds. It has to be organic. I’d like to pick it up in NYC today.
Are you really going to go from store to store, looking for said organic dog-printed wear? Sounds time consuming. Or will you find something online and hope it ships in time? Sounds risky. Overwhelmed, you decide to get an Amazon gift card.
But what if this parent had a personal shopper? One that could sift through every brand, focusing on local businesses at their request, and come up with a short list of options that are in stock locally right now that perfectly fit the occasion?
Enter AI for shopping.
Flöss“The shift toward Generative AI platforms like Chat GPT, Perplexity, Google SGE, and Amazon Rufus is redefining discovery. These tools summarize content across the web, surfacing brands mentioned in reviews, articles, and product guides,” says Mirza Germovic, Senior Vice President, AI Solutions & Advisory at Edelman. This makes these Generative AI platforms — also called Large Language Models, or LLMs — prime sources for shoppers looking for a short list of well vetted products meeting their needs.
According to a survey by Adobe, 39% of consumers have shopped this way, and 53% intend to do so in the coming year. In fact, internet traffic from AI sources pushing to retailer websites grew 1200% from July 2024 to February 2025 —measured by shoppers clicking on a link.
Needless to say, optimizing your website to be read and understood by AI is a huge opportunity for retailers and brands who want to connect with today’s parents.
Erin Rechner, head of kidswear at trend forecasting firm WGSN, says that today’s Gen Z parents want seamless integration between the physical and digital, and have been driving an uptick in in-store shopping. “They also want brands that stand up for and act on their values,” she notes.
Similarly, Millennial parents are looking for easy shopping with virtual try-ons, online purchasing options, and in-store pickups. The younger Gen Alphas prioritize authenticity when they make shopping decisions, Rechner says.
These preferences have paved the way for Generative AI shopping adoption for parent-consumers. When answering a question, the AI platforms select for trustworthy brands with good reviews and demonstrated expertise, as well as desired payment, shipping, and return terms.
If you’ve ever asked an AI a question, you’re familiar with the definitive answer that’s served up nearly instantaneously. When it comes to product recommendations, for retailers and brands, the name of the game is to get noticed and selected by the AI to be part of that answer.
So what does it take to be the answer to potential customers’ questions? According to Germovic, “AI tools deprioritize poorly structured brand sites, or pages without clear trust signals.”
Good strategy, then, would be to better structure your site so the AI could read it more easily and build that authority — two things that are decidedly helpful for your human shoppers as well.
The better and more consistent your site structure is, the more likely the AI is to understand it. “Use clear descriptive language and avoid jargon,” suggests Germovic. “Include specifics like BPA-free, ships in 2 days, and 100% organic cotton.” He notes that writing like a product reviewer will help the AI truly understand the benefits of your unique offerings so that it can surface them for relevant queries.
Germovic says that brands with credible mentions in trusted third party content — in the baby world that could be BabyCenter, Good Housekeeping, or WhatToExpect for example — appear more often in AI output. But it’s not only external mentions that help. “Clear shipping, return, safety, and sustainability information on your site builds trust with both users and machines,” he says.
Petit SleepPetit Sleep, a children’s bedding company that makes soft and sustainable crib sheets and blankets, has been optimizing their content for Generative AI platforms since their inception in November 2023.
“Chat GPT has helped us elevate copy across platforms: social, eNewsletters, and website,” co-founder Emily Gorge says. She and her partner Liz Kentor regularly prompt AI with questions to see if their brand is surfaced and what competitors come up. This gives them insights into how to update their copy to be more relevant for any queries about baby bedding.
“At this moment in time, we feel Generative AI platforms like Chat GPT level the playing field,” says Gorge. Germovic agrees.“Small brands can compete in AI summaries by investing in trust, clarity and relevance—not just ad dollars.”
And better yet: This can breed a new generation of loyal shoppers, Germovic notes. “Loyalty will shift from points and perks to trust and ease. If AI keeps recommending a brand that feels safe and easy, that’s the new loyalty.”
The expert panel for this seminar recap from Playtime & Kid’s Hub NY, photographed by Nafisa SkeieIf you want AI to read your site, you’ll have to check that there’s nothing on the backend preventing it from doing so. For instance, make sure the robots.txt file doesn’t block pages or directories, your XML sitemap is updated for search engines, and your site loads quickly and works well on mobile devices. You should also avoid using meta tags such as ‘noindex’ or ‘nofollow’ on content you want LLMs to reference.
If you’re not technical, this step might be best tackled by an SEO specialist if you don’t have an in-house resource.
To really understand what optimizing for AI can do for you, ask your preferred LLM a question to which your brand would be a great answer. “It’s a fabulous way to discover how the AI interprets the brand,” says Emily Gorge from Petit Sleep. For instance, they’ll ask “what’s the best sheet for pizza lovers?” in order to see if their A Pizza My Heart crib sheet is served up.
If not, Gorge says they start making changes to their website copy to improve their relevance. “We’ve gone as far as changing some of our product names,” she notes. “Re-naming our most popular boy print ‘Planes, Trains, and Dinos’ made the product more discoverable for parents looking up crib sheets with plane, train, or dino prints.”
“Tag pages with structured metadata when possible,” notes Germovic. These include product category, use case, and age range. You’ll also want to clearly tag delivery time, return policy, certifications, and other logistics and make sure every image and product has a clear alt tag and name.
Ensuring your site is well structured is critical to being surfaced by the AI — and the good news is that for most of it, you don’t need engineers, says Germovic. “Use consistent formats like product title, features, specs, reviews and separate text into scannable sections,” he suggests.
Keeping both structure and naming conventions consistent will help the AI make better sense of your site. “If your product is called ComfyCloud Baby Blanket,” in one place and “Cloud Blanket” in another, the AI might miss the connection,” Germovic says.
Adding FAQs that answer common parenting concerns; behind the scenes content — especially on sourcing, manufacturing, and safety; and real customer testimonials with names, dates, and specific product benefits, can help build your site’s authority, says Germovic.
Editorial mentions are even more important when it comes to optimizing for AI. As mentioned earlier, earned media from trustworthy magazines, newspapers, blogs, social media, and other sites can boost your credibility. “Focus on high-trust platforms,” Germovic suggests, and bolster your blogging game with query-based content.
And don’t forget social: “Reddit and YouTube remain discovery zones—but what’s said there now trains AI summaries too,” Germovic says. “You can also try partnering with parenting influencers who post on these platforms.”
“There’s a site called Trakkr that measures AI visibility,” says Petit Sleep’s Gorge. The results help the bedding company adjust their strategy. Gorge says they also look at the Source Medium Report for Chat GPT/Referral through Google Analytics. “We have seen through this that people found us through Chat GPT,” Gorge says.
Diving deeper with their customers, they’ve seen that some have purchased the very products the LLM had surfaced.
The expert panel behind our seminar recap (from left to right): Jennifer Cattaui, moderator and founder of the boutique Babesta. Erin Rechner, Head of Kids Content at WGSN. Mirza Germovic, Senior Vice President, AI Solutions & Advisory at Edelman. Liz Kentor and Emily Gorge, co-founders of Petit Sleep.
Thank you to our expert panel and Jennifer for sharing these incredible insights! We don’t know about you, but we’re taking a closer look at our site’s optimization after this seminar recap.
If you’d like to (re)watch the in-person event in addition to this seminar recap, check it out anytime here on our Instagram!
