How AI will change online shopping and product discovery
Originally posted on LinkedIn, March 23, 2025.
AI is about to change how we buy things online, and it is happening fast.
I was looking for a new laptop, a task that usually turns into a frustrating search through fake reviews, sponsored content, and meaningless ratings. Instead of going through that loop again, I asked Grok 3 what to buy.
It did not give me a useless list of links. It combined performance data, credible reviews, and technical comparisons, then turned them into one specific recommendation. I clicked "Add to cart" without a second thought.
It was the first time in years that I trusted a recommendation on the internet. At a global scale, we are talking about $100 billion a year in online purchases flowing through AI within two years. Purchase decisions will pass through models that can filter out the noise and recommend the right product.
This looks like 2003. Back then, the people who understood how Google ranked websites made huge amounts of money through SEO. This time, it is much harder to game the system. The way to participate is to become a source that AI wants to recommend.
That means:
- Creating strong technical content that models want to cite
- Choosing subjects that nobody has explained properly
- Writing deep analysis instead of shallow copy designed to satisfy keywords
- Matching headlines to questions people actually ask
Over the years, Google went from a brilliant idea to an endless feed of sponsored links. The companies that learn how to become visible and cited by LLMs will become the sources people trust.