Amazon Optimisation
Why Amazon Is Quietly Winning the AI Shopping Funnel
According to Similarweb’s 2025 eCommerce report, referrals from ChatGPT now convert at roughly double the rate of organic search — and Amazon consistently leads among retailers capturing that traffic.
16 October 2025
8 min read
That’s the early signal of where commerce is heading.
AI agents are already influencing purchase intent, and Amazon’s structure makes it the natural destination.
The Signal
AI referrals represent a small slice of traffic today but a disproportionately high-intent one. Shoppers entering through ChatGPT are further down the funnel, looking for a specific answer or product, not just browsing.
Amazon wins here because it’s built for structure — complete data, clean taxonomy, deep reviews, real-time inventory. It’s the most machine-readable product graph on the internet.
The Shift
Discovery is no longer happening on social feeds or search results.
It’s happening inside AI environments where responses are compiled, ranked and rationalised by models.
That means all the old “SEO fundamentals” — schema, consistency, clarity — suddenly matter again. But now the audience isn’t human. It’s the model.
The Play
Make your catalogue answerable. Ensure every product attribute is complete, accurate and aligned across Amazon, Shopify and structured feeds.
Publish agent-grade markup. Treat Schema.org and product metadata as your visibility layer.
Optimise for inclusion, not ranking. The goal isn’t to appear first on Google; it’s to be one of the few brands surfaced confidently in a chat interface.
Track AI referrals early. They’re small now but carry the highest conversion rates of any channel emerging today.
The Take
Amazon hasn’t “won AI commerce” yet — but it’s already the default endpoint for AI-driven discovery. Its scale, structure and trust mean that when a model needs a product answer, it often points there first.
For everyone else, the message is clear: optimise for model visibility, not just search visibility.
Because in AI commerce, the shelf-space you don’t see yet is the one that matters most.
Similarweb’s 2025 eCommerce report
AI agents are already influencing purchase intent, and Amazon’s structure makes it the natural destination.
The Signal
AI referrals represent a small slice of traffic today but a disproportionately high-intent one. Shoppers entering through ChatGPT are further down the funnel, looking for a specific answer or product, not just browsing.
Amazon wins here because it’s built for structure — complete data, clean taxonomy, deep reviews, real-time inventory. It’s the most machine-readable product graph on the internet.
The Shift
Discovery is no longer happening on social feeds or search results.
It’s happening inside AI environments where responses are compiled, ranked and rationalised by models.
That means all the old “SEO fundamentals” — schema, consistency, clarity — suddenly matter again. But now the audience isn’t human. It’s the model.
The Play
Make your catalogue answerable. Ensure every product attribute is complete, accurate and aligned across Amazon, Shopify and structured feeds.
Publish agent-grade markup. Treat Schema.org and product metadata as your visibility layer.
Optimise for inclusion, not ranking. The goal isn’t to appear first on Google; it’s to be one of the few brands surfaced confidently in a chat interface.
Track AI referrals early. They’re small now but carry the highest conversion rates of any channel emerging today.
The Take
Amazon hasn’t “won AI commerce” yet — but it’s already the default endpoint for AI-driven discovery. Its scale, structure and trust mean that when a model needs a product answer, it often points there first.
For everyone else, the message is clear: optimise for model visibility, not just search visibility.
Because in AI commerce, the shelf-space you don’t see yet is the one that matters most.
Similarweb’s 2025 eCommerce report