Promoting an online store in AI responses: why neural networks rarely link to product pages

The author conducted an experiment by asking Alice AI and Perplexity 14 typical consumer questions about electronics to analyze the link structure in AI responses. Out of 243 links, only 10 pointed to specific product pages. The study revealed that AI prefers linking to category pages or informational pages (such as installment terms) because they better address general user queries. Product pages are only included when a user searches for a specific model or checks availability. The author concludes that for effective SEO in the era of AI, online store owners should prioritize optimizing category and policy pages, leaving product page optimization for later. This shifts traditional SEO strategies, requiring content to be adapted to the logic of large language models.