In this solo‑host SEO FOMO episode, Aleyda Solis reviews the latest AI‑driven e‑commerce developments and related SEO insights. She explains OpenAI’s Instant Checkout and Agentic Commerce Protocol, which let ChatGPT users purchase directly from integrated merchants (initially Etsy, soon Shopify) without leaving the chat. She outlines the merchant onboarding steps: applying for Instant Checkout, providing a product feed matching OpenAI’s specifications (similar to Google’s), building an Agentic Checkout API, integrating payment, and obtaining OpenAI certification. Updated Shopping with ChatGPT documentation clarifies that product results are not ads, are selected independently by ChatGPT, and that merchant ranking now considers availability, price, quality, primary seller status, and Instant Checkout enablement, with future personalization. Solis highlights recent guides: Unravel Pini’s actionable walkthrough of OpenAI product feeds, Despina Gavoyannis’s brand‑mention audit methodology for modern SEO, and Google’s AI Mode visual response update with a visual funnel technique, emphasizing the need for image optimization. She predicts Google will soon launch a competing AI‑shopping experience. Finally, she shares Gabriella Jennifer Truxler’s case study on succeeding in saturated SEO markets through unique angles, high‑quality content, product optimization, and community building, and promotes SimilarWeb as a comprehensive analytics tool. The episode ends with calls to subscribe, visit the SEO FOMO newsletter and news site.
Chapters
Let's go through the latest in SEO and AI search with the SEO FOMO to London Read top news of the week. Thank you to SimilarWeb, who's our today's sponsor. The top news of the week was the announcement of OpenAI Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, released already in the US for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and free users who can now buy directly from the US via Etsy right there from the ChatGPT chat and with over a million Shopify merchants coming soon thanks to their integration. So with this release and announcement, ChatGPT has now become an e-commerce platform and they are setting the base for their agent e-commerce experience. They have shared documentation showcasing how users will be able now to shop directly from any merchant that integrates with them without having to leave their interface, as you can see in the example from Etsy here. In order to do this, you need to apply to participate in Instant Checkout, share your product feed according to the product feed specifications that are not too dissimilar from the one of Google in order to provide ChatGPT with accurate, up-to-date information about your products, build your Agentic Checkout API according to the Agentic Checkout specifications, and your payment integration. Finally, you will need to certify with OpenAI and move to production. Along with this release, a new version of the Shopping with ChatGPT Search documentation was updated and a few things have changed. For example, further clarification is given about product selection. Product results are selected independently by ChatGPT and are not ads nor influenced by any OpenAI partnership. And regarding merchants, before they said that the order in which they display merchants was predominantly determined by providers, they didn't re-rank merchants. However, now they specify that this list is generated by ChatGPT based on merchants and product metadata from third-party providers or directly from the merchants themselves. Merchants are ranked based on factors like availability, price, quality, whether they are the maker or primary seller of that item, and whether instant checkout is enabled. So as you can see, the integration with instant checkout is now a factor. They also mentioned how they expect this evolves over time by becoming more personalized based on the user preferences. There are already a couple of very insightful guides and references that have been published in the last few days by Unravel Pini going through these changes, OpenAI product feeds from catalogs to conversations, sharing what has changed. And things that you need to take into account to make the most out of it. This is a very actionable guide that I highly recommend you to check out if you're an e-commerce who wants to implement it. I believe that it's just a matter of weeks, if not days, that Google will now release their own reaction functionality to this via a shopping experience in AI mode. And we know that they already have all the fundamental integration with retailers already. What do you think? The next top resource as this guide from Despina Gavoyannis going through how to audit your brand mentions for modern SEO. She shares how brand mentions are fundamental in order to understand how the public sees your brand, what misinformation might be feeding AI systems, and the topics and entities that are more strongly connected to you, along with practical ways to audit them and identify opportunities. I highly, highly recommend you to take a look at as part of your SEO and AI search optimization process. The next top resource is the announcement from Google about Google AI Mode releasing a more visual response and a visual fanout technique. Google announced that AI Mode has been updated to handle and respond more visually, so AI Mode responses both understand your queries in a more visual way and respond with more visual responses. Google said that responses aim at sparking inspiration, amongst other things. They have also released this graphic showcasing how the funnel technique has been extrapolated to AI mode. This is, to be honest, an expected evolution to use more multimodal visual formats, not only as an output, but as well as an input. And it only shows the importance for you to optimize your website images. Last but not least is this wonderful case study from Gabriella Jennifer Truxler showcasing how you can win in SEO in a saturated market. She goes through how important it is to find your unique angle in order to be able to compete, how good content is the only content that is worth pursuing if you're in a very competitive market, how product optimization is fundamental, and much more, including the importance of community. So if you're an SEO working in a competitive market, this is certainly a resource that you need to take a look at. I want to end today's episode by thanking Similarweb, a comprehensive SEO and digital marketing platform that allows you to go through things like the top topic clusters that are bringing actual traffic to your site, both in organic and paid, for you to easily analyze it, seeing how it is growing or not over time, and identifying opportunities. So if you're also working in a competitive market, this is a tool that you definitely need to take a look at. Thank you again for watching, and remember to subscribe to the channel, subscribe to the SEO FOMO newsletter, seofomo.co, and in case you don't want to wait until the next edition and episode, You can go and take a look at the news.seofomo.co where you can monitor and submit the latest SEO news. Thank you very much again, and until the next edition. Bye-bye.
