The shift from browsing product pages to asking AI questions.
Yesterday, shoppers browsed; today, they ask. Instead of scrolling through endless menus or filtering product grids, consumers now turn to AI assistants, and the answers drive their purchases. A new front door to retail has opened, but it no longer belongs to the retailer or Google or Amazon. It belongs to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. Just as media outlets once lost homepage traffic to Google and Facebook, retailers are now facing the same shift, only faster. Consumers aren’t browsing your carefully designed website anymore; they’re asking AI assistants.
— AI Is Changing The Rules Of Web Traffic — A GEO Playbook For Online Retailers · Forbes