Intrigue DigitalAI search ignored us. Here is what we changed.
ShopRest ships orders from China to Australia for Shopify brands. When they asked AI assistants who to use, they weren't mentioned once. Here is what the AI picked instead, and what they are doing about it.
Has AI recommended you, or ignored you?
Ignored, so far. In October I asked ChatGPT and Perplexity which fulfilment company an Australian Shopify brand should use to ship orders from China to Australia. ShopRest was not mentioned once.
The names that did come up were a Melbourne competitor with a public Shopify app and more than 60 app-store reviews, plus a few large global 3PLs. The pattern was clear. AI answers favour companies with reviews on third-party sites, comparison pages and a Shopify App Store listing. Not necessarily the cheapest or the closest service.
No customer has told us they found us through an AI tool yet.
AI answers tend to name one or two default providers per question. There is no equivalent of a page-two search result to climb from.
What have you changed because of AI search?
- Let the AI crawlers in. We asked our hosting admin to unblock AI crawlers, so the assistants can actually read our site.
- Published the answers people actually type. Reference prices and comparison articles for real questions, such as the per-kilogram cost of shipping from China to Australia and Christmas shipping cut-off dates.
- Built a third-party footprint. We set up profiles on G2, Clutch, Trustpilot and Crunchbase, so there is information about us that doesn't come from us.
- Started measuring it. Every month we check whether we appear in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Bing Copilot answers, and record the result as a baseline.
What is your biggest worry?
AI answers tend to name one or two default providers per question. A newer company can stay invisible even when its published prices are lower, and there is no equivalent of a page-two search result to climb from.
Our take: why this is the case for AI search
The shortlist has shrunk from ten links to two names. On Google, a business on page two still gets found by someone. In an AI answer, if you aren't one of the one or two names given, you don't exist for that buyer. ShopRest's test shows how fast that plays out: a competitive niche, a real buying question, and zero mentions.
Price doesn't win the answer. Proof does. The businesses the AI named had reviews on other sites, an app store listing and comparison content. AI assistants lean on what other sources say about you, not only what your own website says. That is why being cheaper or closer wasn't enough.
The fix is a checklist, not a mystery. Everything ShopRest changed is the core of AEO and GEO work: let AI crawlers in, publish clear answers to the exact questions buyers ask, build third-party mentions and reviews, then track whether you are being named. The earlier you start, the more likely you are the default name an AI reaches for, and defaults are hard to dislodge.
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Book a free strategy call →Business Spotlight features are contributed by operators in our network and reflect their own experience and views. Intrigue Digital does not verify the internal metrics or figures reported and they should be read as the author's own account, not independently audited results. The "Our take" section is written by Intrigue Digital.