GEO
2 articles
Query Fan-Out for Commerce: The Hidden Retrieval Layer
A shopper types "what's the best stroller for a 6-month-old who fits in a small SUV trunk." That single sentence does not get answered by one search. Behind the scenes, the AI assistant decomposes it into eight to twelve sub-queries, runs them in parallel, scores the passages it gets back, and assembles an answer. Most product pages are tuned for the original query and invisible to the sub-queries that actually do the work. TL;DR: Query fan-out is the technique that AI search engines us
AI Shopping Hit Mainstream in Q1 2026. Most Brands Aren't Ready.
TL;DR In Q1 2026, five independent consumer polls and Adobe's commerce analytics landed on the same story. Between 30% and 50% of US online adults used AI for shopping in some form, with an IBM-NRF global study of 18,000 consumers reporting 45%. AI-referred traffic to US retailers grew 393% year over year. AI visitors now convert 42% better than humans. The question stopped being "will consumers use AI to shop?" It is now "which brands are visible when they do?" What five independent