AI Shopping Agents Force Retailers to Rethink SEO and Brand, H&M Says

H&M's acting global SEO lead Ian Macfarlane sees a fundamental shift in how brands reach customers. The rise of AI shopping agents means brands will increasingly market to machines rather than humans, a change that rewrites decades of retail marketing assumptions.

"Brands are going to be increasingly disintermediated in their relationships with their customers by AI robots," Macfarlane said in a Q&A with InternetRetailing. "It really gets to the heart of the question: What does it actually mean to be a brand in today's world? What does it mean if your consumer is not necessarily another human being, but an alien artificial intelligence?"

That shift extends to search optimization. Generative engine optimization, or GEO, has become a requirement alongside traditional SEO and on-site search, Macfarlane said. The early fear that AI would kill search engine optimization has faded. "The people with the best ability to do the actual work required to make your brand more visible in AI search are your SEO team," he said. The scope now covers social, retailer search, and local search depending on the sector, he added.

Brand trust remains a core driver of AI-generated recommendations, Macfarlane said. "A brand being well known, liked and respected is also one of the biggest drivers of AI search visibility." He called the recent Google AI Overviews, which summarize brand searches with pros and cons, a "huge reputational thing to grapple with."

On agentic commerce, where AI agents purchase on a consumer's behalf. Macfarlane advised caution on timelines. "Even I'm not yet comfortable giving what is essentially an overenthusiastic robot intern my credit card and letting it run wild," he said. Consumer adoption will take time, he said, because "everyone knows AI gets stuff embarrassingly wrong at times." He recommended retailers start integration planning now, so they are not forced to wait three-plus years if the channel takes off. Predicting five years out, he said, "is a fool's game."

Physical stores still matter, especially for fashion, Macfarlane said. "For some consumers, nothing can replace physically feeling and touching clothes." The key is ensuring online information, across Google Maps and large language model data sources, is correct. "Incorrect information can mean disgruntled customers turning up to find a store closed, or not finding you at all and going directly to a competitor." He added that brands should get the basic fundamentals in place first.

AI handles complex search queries better than traditional search, Macfarlane said. "The more detail you give it, the better the answer." Brands should identify the occasions and moments most relevant to their customers and target AI platforms through PR outreach and on-site content. "With any good marketing, it really comes down to understanding your customers," he said. "And that's a part of marketing I hope will never change."

Macfarlane will explore the topic further at the CustomerX conference in London on October 14.