If AI Agents Start Making Purchases, Does SEO & Marketing Still Matter?
The title of this blog was a question that came up in a recent internal SEO roundtable that our team hosted.
With the rise of artificial intelligence agent-driven experiences — where tools like Gemini or ChatGPT can browse, compare, and even complete purchases on behalf of users — we asked a simple but uncomfortable question: “If AI agents handle the buying process, where does that leave marketing as we know it today?”
What followed was a candid, sometimes conflicting, discussion across our team. Here’s where we landed: why marketing isn’t disappearing, but shifting in ways many brands aren’t ready for…
The “Moment of Persuasion” is Disappearing
For years, marketing has revolved around a pretty specific moment — that point where a user lands on your site, and you convince them to take action. It’s where we’ve poured our energy: refining landing pages, optimizing user journeys, testing headlines, and tweaking CTAs.
But in an AI agent-first world, that moment might never happen.
During our roundtable, we kept coming back to this idea that users may not actually “browse” in the way we’re used to anymore. Instead of clicking through pages and comparing options themselves, they might just tell an AI agent what they want — something like, “Find me the best running shoes under $150 and buy them.” From there, the agent handles the rest: researching, comparing, deciding, and even completing the purchase.
If that becomes the norm, there’s no landing page to optimize. No product page to scroll through. No final click to win.
That’s the uncomfortable shift: the traditional moment where marketing does its most visible work starts to disappear. So the question isn’t how we improve that moment anymore… It’s where our influence moves when that moment is gone.
The New Focus: Before the Agent Decides
The consensus from our roundtable wasn’t that marketing is disappearing (at least we hope not for job security! lol). It’s time marketers start focusing on strategy earlier in the process.
1. Brand Familiarity Becomes a Ranking Signal to AI
One of the most interesting shifts we kept circling back to in the discussion was how much brand familiarity starts to matter in an AI agent-first world, maybe even more than it does today.
Instead of a user scanning a list of options and making a choice in real time, AI agents are pulling from signals they already know and trust. That changes the game. It’s no longer just about showing up — it’s about already being known before the decision even starts.
How does the agent “choose” your brand? Well, you have to be in its initial retrieval set. I wrote another blog all about how to improve your brand visibility in AI search, which is worth a read if you’re unsure about this topic. The short answer is that the AI needs to be able to crawl your site cleanly and find unique information that helps answer the question or fulfill the request.
While there are many different searches, let’s talk about a simple example. If a user specifies a brand in their search: “Buy me a pair of shoes” vs. “Buy me a pair of Nike shoes,” a brand the AI can easily retrieve and see as trustworthy has already won before any comparison happens.
There’s also a data layer here that makes this even more powerful. As Christian Wenzel pointed out, tools like Gemini may already have access to years of purchase behavior through things like email receipts. That means they’re not just guessing; they’re making recommendations based on patterns. So if your brand has history, recognition, or repeat behavior tied to it, you’re more likely to surface. If it doesn’t, you’re fighting an uphill battle just to get considered.
That’s the shift: brand awareness isn’t just a “nice to have” anymore; it’s critical to stand out to AI agents.
2. Reviews & Reputation Are One of AI’s Favorites
Another theme that came up quickly was how much reviews and reputation start to carry the weight when it comes to being recognized and served by AI agents.
When humans make decisions, factors like design, storytelling, and UX can influence how a brand feels. But AI agents don’t “feel” anything. They’re looking for signals they can interpret quickly and confidently. Reviews are among the cleanest and most reliable available.
That’s because reviews translate really well into structured data. They give agents something concrete to evaluate — volume, ratings, sentiment — all things that can be compared across options without ambiguity.
It also shifts how we think about trust. Instead of asking, “Does this page do a good job convincing a user?” we’re asking, “Does this brand have enough crawlable, appealing data for an AI to recommend it?” In that sense, reputation becomes less about perception and more about evidence.
The brands that invest in generating consistent, high-quality reviews — and making sure those signals are accessible — are the ones that will have an edge. Because when an agent is deciding what to recommend, it’s not going to be swayed by clever copy or a beautiful layout. It’s going to follow the data.
3. Your Product Feed Becomes Your Sales Pitch
This was one of the biggest mindset shifts to come out of the conversation — and one that caught a few of us off guard as we talked it through.
If AI agents are the ones doing the comparing and deciding, they’re not looking at your beautifully designed landing pages or carefully structured product detail pages. They’re pulling from the data behind them. Which means your product feed (the thing many brands treat as a backend necessity) starts to become your primary sales tool.
As Dylan Jones explained during the discussion, “There are further things that you can put into product feeds that are going to be able to talk more directly to the agent rather than forcing it to go back into its learning data.” That’s a big shift. Instead of relying on an AI to interpret your website content, you’re giving it exactly what it needs — in a format it can use instantly.
And it’s not just about basic fields like price or availability. The nuance matters. The details matter. The way you describe your product matters. If they’re searching for competitive advantages, that’s where that copy on the page is going to start to really matter. In this case, that “copy” isn’t just living on your website. It needs to live inside your structured data, too. For instance, if you’re a brand that sells shoes, competitive advantages and ways people search for differences matter, like:
- Durability (heavy-duty, materials like rubber soles, etc.)
- Use cases (running, walking, hiking, etc.)
- Specific features (arch support, waterproofing, etc.)
- Etc.
Those are the inputs an agent uses to match a product to a need.
There’s also a practical layer here that Keith Urban called out — the importance of operational details: “Those other shopping parameters become more important — like free shipping or this coupon, that coupon.” When an agent is comparing options, those factors can directly influence the outcome. If your competitor has clearer or more favorable data in those fields, they may win — even if your actual product is stronger.
The takeaway from this part of the conversation was pretty clear: persuasion doesn’t disappear; it just moves. Instead of happening through design and UX, it happens through structure, completeness, and clarity of data.
Your product feed isn’t just a backend requirement anymore. It’s your pitch.
4. Content is About Brand Identity, Not Just Organic Visibility
At one point in the conversation, we found ourselves asking a version of the same question: if users aren’t actually visiting websites from search engine results pages the way they used to… does SEO optimized content still matter?
The short answer from the group was “yes,” but not in the way we’re used to measuring it. Instead of thinking about content as something that drives clicks and sessions, we started reframing it as something that shapes how AI understands your brand in the first place. Even if a user never lands on your blog post or watches your video directly, that content can still influence whether you show up in an agent’s recommendations.
Adam Wells expanded on this, especially when it comes to formats that don’t always follow traditional SEO rules: “A lot of that stuff that’s not even ranking is from video… this is how you establish your brand.”
That’s an important distinction. We’ve already started seeing cases where content that doesn’t rank well organically still gets cited or surfaced in AI-generated responses. So the value of content is no longer tied strictly to where it ranks — it’s tied to how well it represents you across the broader ecosystem.
Malcolm Jones brought it back to something more foundational: “A big part of that is that we are standing for something rather than all that we have on the site is a homepage, product pages, and a checkout process.”
That’s really what online content becomes now, not just a traffic driver, but a signal of identity. It tells both users and AI agents what you’re about, what you’re good at, and when you should be considered. So while content might become less visible in the user journey, it becomes more important behind the scenes, quietly shaping whether you’re included at all.
5. Automated Purchases for Small Purchases Only
While much of the conversation leaned into the idea of fully automated, agent-driven purchases, there was also some healthy skepticism in the room… Not everyone is ready to hand over decision-making entirely. For many types of purchases — especially those involving personal preference, style, or higher cost — there’s still a desire to be involved in the decision.
Keith went on to describe a more likely near-term scenario: a process in which the AI agent presents options, the user weighs in, and the AI completes the purchase. That middle step (the human layer) still matters, obviously.
Dylan built on that idea by distinguishing between different types of purchases: everyday, low-consideration items vs higher-consideration or lifestyle-driven products. The simple, low-consideration things like buying a $10 phone cord could be ordered by AI, but more hands-on, bigger purchases like a printer are not being checked out autonomously yet. That nuance is key. Because it means the shift to agent-driven commerce won’t happen all at once or evenly across industries, since many of these orders are for products rather than services.
Where This Leaves Brands
By the end of our team’s conversation, one thing was clear: this isn’t just a channel shift — it’s a foundational change in how brands get discovered and chosen.
The brands served won’t just be those with the best ads or the highest rankings. They’ll be the ones that understand how to show up across this new ecosystem in a way that both humans and machines can interpret.
That means thinking beyond the surface-level experience and investing in what sits underneath:
- structured, accessible data
- consistent brand signals
- strong reputation and review profiles
- content that clearly communicates positioning
It also means recognizing that marketing doesn’t go away; it just becomes less obvious. We still need strategists to put themselves in users’ shoes to understand their biggest hurdles and speak directly to them. That human layer (understanding behavior, anticipating needs, structuring information accordingly) doesn’t disappear. If anything, it becomes more valuable.
Want to Prepare for an Agent-First Future?
This shift is already underway, and most brands aren’t built for it yet.
At Greenlane Marketing, we help companies adapt to evolving search, AI, and digital ecosystems: from structuring data for discoverability to building strategies that influence how decisions are made, not just where clicks happen.
If you’re thinking about what this means for your business, reach out. We’d love to help you navigate what’s next. Explore our AI Search Optimization Services.
