Question 1

How is AI changing e-commerce?

Accepted Answer

_Fine-tuned models, attribution, category death._

> To explore this question, I looked at one industry: e-commerce. In my online certificate programs, I've explored AI use cases across many industries such as healthcare, media, coffee, finance and e-commerce. While healthcare tends to be slowest to adopt AI, e-commerce consistently leads.

— [ShopTalk 2025: Just 1% Of Vendors Use Generative AI To The Max](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/03/21/state-of-genai--only-1---shoptalk-2025-in-numbers/) · _Forbes_

> AI is not adding a feature to the store, it is rebuilding the store around the shopper, and every part of the journey is shifting at once. Consider what is changing. Search is moving from a list of ranked links to a single synthesized answer. The shelf space is moving outside of retail, where answer engines, not retailers, decide what gets seen, and new advertising formats are forming around them, from paid LLM-embedded ads to…

— [Three Mistakes Brands Make In The Age Of AI-Driven E-Commerce](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2026/05/23/three-mistakes-brands-make-in-the-age-of-ai-driven-e-commerce/) · _Forbes_

Question 2

How is the Amazon homepage dying?

Accepted Answer

_Retail unbundling, AI assistants as the new aisle._

> The days of big online retail as we know it are over. Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and many others will all need to reinvent themselves as e-commerce changes. Once again, the homepage is dead. What will this mean for the big brands?

— [The End Of Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy? AI-Driven Retail Unbundling](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/30/the-end-of-amazon-walmart-best-buy---ai-driven-retail-unbundling/) · _Forbes_

> Now LLMs decide what gets recommended. I have argued that [Amazon's homepage is dying](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/30/the-end-of-amazon-walmart-best-buy---ai-driven-retail-unbundling/) and that retail is being unbundled the way media was a decade ago. To become visible, you need to be discovered by ChatGPT and Claude. A new discipline, GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), is replacing SEO (Search Engine…

— [The State Of E-Commerce: Every Layer Of Discovery Changed At Once](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/state-e-commerce-finetuned-ai-every-brand-lutz-finger-gs5bf/) · _linkedin_

Question 3

Is Google search dying?

Accepted Answer

_What changes when LLMs become the search interface._

> Back in the 1990s, people said "All the information is out there at the internet... we just need to find it." That was the time of search engines — AltaVista, Yahoo! Search, Google, Lycos, WebCrawler, Excite. Even Disney tried its hand with Go (1998). New Technology — New Search: Large Language Models Build AI Search.

— [2025: The Year Of Search But Not The End Of Google](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/01/03/2025-the-year-of-search-but-not-the-end-of-google/) · _Forbes_

> They try to mimic ChatGPT, and they fail. We saw the same pattern in the early days of Google, when every site tried to build search as good as Google's and could not. I am guilty of this mistake myself. In 2024 I launched a consultative bot for [Decent](https://www.facebook.com/groups/decentespresso/posts/2676603432523531/) that nobody asked for.

— [Three Mistakes Brands Make In The Age Of AI-Driven E-Commerce](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2026/05/23/three-mistakes-brands-make-in-the-age-of-ai-driven-e-commerce/) · _Forbes_

Question 4

What is 2025 for search?

Accepted Answer

_Predictions about search changing in 2025._

> It might sound like a throwback to the 1990s, but technology has transformed the way we search for and interact with information. If past patterns hold true, 2025 will be the year of search. Will it be the end of Google?

— [2025: The Year Of Search But Not The End Of Google](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/01/03/2025-the-year-of-search-but-not-the-end-of-google/) · _Forbes_

> Figure 7-1. The hype curve of predictions, by Google Trends Despite all of this hype, the goal of making predictions in business is nothing new: for decades, stock traders have tried to predict the market, insurance compa- nies have tried to identify lower risk individuals, and many more have tried to come up with a system for predicting what will benefit their enterprise.

— [Finger Dutta Ask Measure Learn (1)](https://www.lutzfinger.com/book/) · _Book — Ask, Measure, Learn_

Question 5

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Accepted Answer

_Why being discoverable to AI assistants is the new SEO._

> For brands a new playbook is emerging: AEO. AEO is just the beginning.

— [Study Shows LLM Conversion Rate Is 9x Better — AEO Is Coming](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/study-shows-llm-conversion-rate-is-9x-better---aeo-is-coming/) · _Forbes_

> AEO is the practice of structuring content so that LLMs like ChatGPT can understand, reference and recommend your brand in response to user questions. To get picked up by an LLM, you need to understand how these models learn from content.

— [Answer Engine Optimization — What Brands Need To Know](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/answer-engine-optimization-aeo--what-brands-need-to-know/) · _Forbes_

Question 6

What replaces SEO in the LLM era?

Accepted Answer

_Strategies for being discoverable to AI assistants._

> But based on research I conducted with Cornell Master's students, that shift is happening much faster. LLM-driven traffic is already starting to outperform traditional search — not in volume, but in value. Traffic from LLMs converts at nearly 9x higher rates than traditional search. This is the biggest disruption to search since the dawn of the internet.

— [Study Shows LLM Conversion Rate Is 9x Better — AEO Is Coming](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/study-shows-llm-conversion-rate-is-9x-better---aeo-is-coming/) · _Forbes_

> And that memory shapes future recommendations. Monitoring any LLM answers misses the point. To fully understand how your brand is being represented, you'd have to know the personalized memory of every single user — an impossible task for any dashboard. Best Measurement Of LLM Traffic: just watch your traffic.

— [Answer Engine Optimization — What Brands Need To Know](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/answer-engine-optimization-aeo--what-brands-need-to-know/) · _Forbes_

Question 7

Why do LLMs convert better than search?

Accepted Answer

_Trust, personalization, and conversion lift from AI traffic._

> Some predict that by 2028, more people will discover products and information through large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini than through traditional search engines. But based on research I conducted with Cornell Master's students, that shift is happening much faster. LLM-driven traffic is already starting to outperform traditional search — not in volume, but in value.

— [Study Shows LLM Conversion Rate Is 9x Better — AEO Is Coming](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/study-shows-llm-conversion-rate-is-9x-better---aeo-is-coming/) · _Forbes_

> The latest wave includes dashboards designed to track your brand's presence across ChatGPT, Perplexity and other platforms. But here's the problem: LLMs don't behave like search engines. They remember. Google would always return the same results, even if you had already clicked those links before.

— [Answer Engine Optimization — What Brands Need To Know](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/answer-engine-optimization-aeo--what-brands-need-to-know/) · _Forbes_

Q&A, Search & GEO

How is AI changing e-commerce?

How is the Amazon homepage dying?

Is Google search dying?

What is 2025 for search?

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

What replaces SEO in the LLM era?

Why do LLMs convert better than search?