Online shoppers’ preferences for search tools are changing, and as they do, retailers — like other website operators — are grappling with what the idea of Google Zero means for ecommerce.

Google Zero is a term that entered popular discussions recently and refers to the day when websites can no longer rely on traditional search engines to send organic referral traffic to their product listings and web pages. The rise of artificial intelligence tools in the form of large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI technology has meant shoppers have choices when deciding where to compare prices and evaluate available options across ecommerce sites.

Already, AI search’s role in ecommerce is growing. In July, Adobe Analytics declared that web traffic from AI tools on Prime Day 2025 grew 3,300% year over year. Google’s addition of AI summaries above search results fueled the adoption of so-called zero-click search, where users no longer need to click through to other websites to find enough information to answer their original questions.

For online merchants that have depended on search as a channel for acquiring customers, this trend has dramatic implications for their operations and ecommerce sites. So, even if Google Zero doesn’t happen tomorrow — or in full at some point in the near future — retailers are still preparing. They’re adopting practices and solutions that they hope will ease the transition.

What does Google Zero mean for retailers?

The phrase Google Zero was introduced by Nilay Patel, the editor in chief at the technology news website The Verge. In 2024, he used it to describe scenarios for businesses that would occur “if their Google traffic were to go to zero.”

In early August 2025, that has not yet come to pass. However, as seen on the most recent Amazon Prime Day, online retailers are among those businesses watching AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, account for growing shares of the referral traffic they expect to receive. As that happens, attention to search engine optimization (SEO) now includes generative engine optimization (GEO), which is not always as straightforward.

Meanwhile, a March and April 2025 study by Pew Research found that users seeing Google Search results with AI summaries were significantly less likely to click on links Google displayed below. Another 2025 study by the marketing firm Seer Interactive found that organic clickthrough rates fell year over year from 1.41% to 0.64% in January in cases where AI overviews appeared. Notably, that same study observed clickthrough rates rise over the same period when AI overviews were absent.

Still, some effective strategies for managing these changes are emerging.

Optimizing for AI-generated traffic

Jon Sica, the chief operating officer at Batteries Plus, told Digital Commerce 360 that his company is taking several approaches to boost referrals from AI tools.

“It is internally mapping — when we see results and a generative AI product — auditing where it’s coming from and figuring that out because usually they have the citations,” Sica explained.

Batteries Plus No. 937 in the Top 2000 Database. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales. There, it falls under the Consumer Electronics category.

Currently, about 1% of the referral traffic Batteries Plus receives comes from an AI source, he said. However, by monitoring the sources in citations from answers where Batteries Plus values being mentioned, his team is able to take action to increase its share of mentions by AI models.

“We’re actively — whether it’s updating Wikipedia page information that may be outdated, addressing customer concerns on the Better Business Bureau, which we may not have been notified about, and really tightening up that process, using tools to get into Reddit and participate in those communities in an authentic way,” Sica said. “Those are all priorities that retailers have to take on right now as that information proliferates very, very quickly and those AI results really become more the norm as the first thing a customer sees when they search for something about your brand.”

Using AI to prepare for AI

Elsewhere, at the jewelry brand Kendra Scott, the company has adapted its SEO strategy to accommodate AI. It added 8,000 new pages to its ecommerce site over a year with optimizing for AI search in mind, Digiday reported in July.

Kamanasish Kundu, senior vice president and head of digital and ecommerce at Kendra Scott, told the publication that 5% of his company’s annual web traffic was arriving to web pages created with generative AI through the platform Optiversal.

Those pages frame Kendra Scott’s products within themes engineered to perform better in long-tail search queries, prioritizing concepts and use cases that could be fits for AI-generated summaries. The new approach is distinct from an approach optimized for product names and short category-oriented phrases. Nevertheless, 27% of those pages still appeared on the first pages of Google Search results.

Thus, traditional search is still playing an important role. Yet, even as it does, SEO and GEO are becoming part of the same strategic conversation.

Kendra Scott is No. 679 in the Top 2000 and appears in the Jewelry category.

Abbas Haleem contributed reporting for this article.

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