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As Chinese consumers increasingly turn to large language models for shopping guidance, brands are now investing in visibility within AI-generated responses, as demonstrated during the recent Double 11 shopping festival. Companies have started paying for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) services to feature prominently in AI answers, and several leading models are experimenting with including e-commerce links directly in their replies.
During the festival, AI systems like Doubao and Baidu’s Ernie Bot actively incorporated shopping links to popular platforms such as Douyin, JD.com, and Taobao. Conversely, other models like Tencent’s Yuanbao and Moonshot AI’s Kimi were more reserved, providing purchase links only upon user request. Yuanbao also displayed a note stating, “Third-party links are provided for convenience only; we are not responsible for the content.” Meanwhile, DeepSeek and Tongyi Qianwen have yet to incorporate e-commerce features into their responses.
Brands from sectors like finance, education, consumer goods, and home appliances are allocating budgets to test GEO strategies, said Liu Wenming, co-founder and chief product officer of a GEO technology company. He mentioned that at least five brands from various industries have partnered to explore having their products featured in AI answer boxes.
Service providers in this space explained to us that currently, GEO mainly boosts brand visibility rather than directly driving sales, since tracking purchases from AI-generated content remains challenging.
On the global front, AI platforms are increasingly integrating shopping functions. For example, OpenAI added in-chat shopping options to ChatGPT in April, allowing users to purchase products through external links, and introduced a “one-click checkout” feature in September that enables direct buying from Etsy and Shopify within the chat.
A Gartner forecast predicts that by 2026, search engine traffic will decline by 25 percent, with nearly 25 percent of search activity shifting to AI chatbots, highlighting the importance of AI platforms as emerging channels for digital marketing.
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