One rain jacket, described three ways
Microsoft Advertising’s guide for retailers writes the same product as an SEO line, an AEO line and a GEO line. Here is the method behind the three, and how to try it on your best seller.
Microsoft Advertising has a guide for retailers called “From discovery to influence: A guide to AEO and GEO”. On page 5 it shows one product described three ways. It is a short lesson in how a product listing changes when an AI assistant reads it.
Two honest notes first. Microsoft sells advertising, and the guide is written around Copilot and Bing. The three lines are Microsoft’s examples. The guide does not present them as a test result.
The three descriptions
These are the three lines, word for word from the guide.
- SEO: “Waterproof rain jacket”.
- AEO: “Lightweight, packable waterproof rain jacket with stuff pocket, ventilated seams and reflective piping”.
- GEO: “Best-rated waterproof jacket by Outdoor magazine, no-hassle returns allowed for 180 days, three year warranty, 4.8 star rating”.
The guide’s shorthand: if SEO focused on driving clicks, AEO is focused on driving clarity with enriched, real-time data. GEO helps establish credibility through authoritative voice.
What AEO adds: clarity
The SEO line names the product. The AEO line says what it is like: lightweight, packable, with a stuff pocket, ventilated seams and reflective piping. A shopper asking an assistant for a jacket for a three day hike is asking about those things.
The guide gives the same advice as rules. Pair the product name with its key differentiator in the title. Front-load the description with benefits: who it is for, what problem it solves, what makes it better. Add clear use-case context an AI can match to queries, such as “best for day hikes above 40 degrees”. Display specs as key and value pairs and feature lists.
What GEO adds: credibility
The GEO line adds proof. In the guide’s example: a named magazine rating, a 180 day returns window, a three year warranty and a 4.8 star rating. Each one is a fact a shopper can check, and each one has to be true for your product.
The guide says AI systems prioritize trustworthy sources. It advises including verified reviews marked up with Review and AggregateRating schema, linking to expert reviews where your products are featured, and surfacing certifications as factual entities. It also warns: “AI systems penalize low-trust language.”
Where the AI reads it
The guide says a product has to show up in three ways. First, crawled data: what AI systems learned in training and retrieve from indexed pages. Second, product feeds and APIs: structured data you push to AI platforms. Third, live website data: what an AI agent sees when it visits your site, such as rich media, reviews and pricing.
It also says that the sale fails without a live site working properly, even if the feed and crawled data are perfect. A better description helps only if the facts match everywhere they appear.
Try it on your best seller
This is our reading of the guide’s advice, in five steps.
What to do this week
Then see what AI says. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot a question a shopper would ask about that product, and read the answer. If it leaves out what you just wrote, check that the same words are on the page, in the feed and in the structured data.
How Shopthru.ai helps
Shopthru.ai is an AI agents team for consumer brands. It asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI, Perplexity and Copilot what your shoppers ask, finds where AI gets your products, prices or policies wrong, and drafts each fix into an approval inbox. It ships only on your yes, then checks again. Instagram and Amazon are next.