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The GeekWire-listed “AEO & ASO: Optimize your business for AI Search & AI Transactions” event, presented by Aizii.ai and TF Labs, was scheduled for September 18, 2026, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. PDT. That date has passed. Its central distinction remains useful for businesses: appearing in AI-assisted search is not the same as enabling an AI agent to complete a purchase. Both depend on sound fundamentals, and neither can be guaranteed by a special markup or a vendor promise.
What AEO and ASO mean in this event’s framing
The GeekWire event listing describes AEO as improving informational visibility, entity authority, and conversational recommendations. It uses ASO for the commerce infrastructure that supports machine-to-machine transactions. These are the organizers’ terms for the event, not universally settled industry definitions.
In practical terms, the distinction is between helping a person or AI system find and understand your business, and making your products and checkout usable by software acting on a customer’s behalf. A business can work on the first without supporting the second.
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How to improve the chance of being surfaced in AI search
Start with the same durable foundations used for conventional search: make pages accessible to crawlers, publish useful and original information, keep factual details accurate, and follow search-engine policies. Google says its generative AI Search features rely on core Search ranking and quality systems, and that SEO remains relevant. Its guidance does not call for special schema.org markup for generative AI search. See Google’s AI Search optimization guide.
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Make the underlying information clear and trustworthy
- Ensure important pages can be crawled and indexed, and that navigation makes the business, its offerings, and supporting information easy to find.
- Use specific, accurate descriptions of products, services, policies, and expertise. Keep facts consistent across the site and other business-controlled listings.
- Create original material that directly answers customer questions rather than rewriting generic information to target AI systems.
- Review AI-assisted material before publication. Google’s guidance on generative AI content emphasizes usefulness, accuracy, and compliance with Search policies, rather than treating the use of AI itself as a ranking shortcut.
Use structured data accurately, not as a promise of placement
Structured data can help systems interpret page content and may make a page eligible for certain Search features. It must accurately reflect visible content and comply with Google’s policies. Eligibility does not guarantee appearance, and markup does not guarantee citation in an AI-generated answer. Google states that no special schema.org structured data is required specifically for its generative AI Search features.
What a business needs for AI-assisted shopping and checkout
Search visibility and agent-enabled transactions are separate capabilities. A product being discoverable in an AI interface does not mean that interface can buy it. The catalog must expose reliable product information, and the merchant’s commerce and payment setup must work with the agent and protocol involved.
Google describes the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) as a way for agents and merchants to exchange information across parts of the shopping journey, including discovery and checkout. Google’s documentation describes agentic checkout as acting at the customer’s direction; it does not establish that every merchant, platform, or agent supports the feature. Review Google Merchant Center’s UCP and agentic checkout information and Shopify’s UCP overview for the documented scope and ecosystem details.
Check the prerequisites before investing
- Catalog quality: Product names, descriptions, prices, availability, variants, and identifiers should be accurate and kept current wherever they are exposed.
- Technical compatibility: Confirm that the commerce platform, catalog feed, checkout, and payment flow support the relevant protocol and agent. Protocol availability alone does not make a particular store compatible.
- Merchant control: Understand what the agent can do, where the customer authorizes the purchase, and which party controls checkout, order handling, and payment.
- Operational readiness: Plan for changes to inventory, pricing, returns, fulfillment, and customer support to be reflected in the systems an agent uses.
- Proof of value: Ask for measured outcomes, the measurement method, and the specific merchants and integrations involved. Separate verified results from forecasts or product claims.
Where Aizii.ai and TF Labs fit
The event was presented by TF Labs and Aizii.ai. Aizii positions its product as an AEO discovery layer and an ASO offering for AI shopping agents. Its pages describe services such as audits, entity resolution, content structuring, freshness monitoring, structured catalog data, and transaction readiness. Aizii says its service is in a gated pilot. Those pages explain the vendor’s proposed offering; they do not independently establish improvements in rankings, citations, conversion, or completed transactions. See Aizii’s homepage, its AEO page, and its ASO page.
Before adopting a specialist service, compare its work with what your existing search, content, catalog, and commerce teams can already do. Request concrete deliverables, integration requirements, a baseline, and a way to measure results. Aizii’s terms of service, last updated July 12, 2026, say it cannot guarantee citation placement, a fixed recommendation share, or automated settlement, and describe third-party model behavior as volatile. Treat claims about deterministic visibility or transaction outcomes accordingly.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to decide what to do next
- Audit conventional search basics. Check crawlability, indexing, page quality, factual accuracy, and any policy issues before buying tools marketed specifically for AI search.
- Improve information quality. Make business and product facts clear, consistent, useful, and easy to maintain. Use structured data only when it accurately represents the page and meets the relevant platform’s rules.
- Map the transaction path. Identify your current catalog, commerce platform, checkout, payment provider, and the agent or protocol you hope to support. Verify compatibility rather than assuming it.
- Set a measurable pilot objective. Decide what evidence would count as success, such as improved data quality or a documented transaction flow. Track the method and scope so that vendor projections are not mistaken for demonstrated performance.
The event listing provides its subject and schedule, but no recording, slides, or post-event outcomes are established in the available public information. The practical takeaway is to treat AEO as an extension of useful, well-maintained search content and ASO as a separate commerce-integration challenge—not as guaranteed shortcuts to AI recommendations or sales.
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