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7 October 2026 Blog Posts

According to McKinsey & Company, 60% of consumers now regularly use the AI overview at the top of organic search. Only 1% of the sources those answers cite are brand-owned websites.
That’s the gap. AI assistants are pulling answers from product feeds, reviews, third-party mentions and pages they can easily read. If your sale page is blocked from AI crawlers, your feed shows the wrong price, or your delivery cut-offs are buried in a PDF, AI will recommend someone else.
The good news is that most of the fixes are within your control, and many of them are the same SEO fundamentals that have always driven BFCM results. We’ve put them into one checklist.
AI VISIBILITY |
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Let AI crawlers in. Check that robots.txt, bot-blocking apps and firewall settings are not blocking OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT), PerplexityBot, Bingbot (Copilot) or Googlebot. If they can’t read your sale page, they can’t recommend it. |
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Keep product feeds accurate. Shopify’s Google & YouTube app sends your catalogue to Google Merchant Center, which feeds Shopping results and AI Mode. Sale price, stock, brand and GTIN must match your site, or products can be disapproved midsale. |
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Check Shopify Agentic Storefronts. Found under Sales channels in your admin, it syndicates your catalogue to ChatGPT, Copilot and other AI channels. Selling currently centres on US buyers, so complete store policies, GTINs and brand fields now to be ready as it expands. |
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Answer the questions shoppers ask AI. Add a short FAQ to your BFCM hub and top product pages: sale dates, Christmas delivery cut-offs, holiday returns, price matching. Specific, plain answers are what AI assistants quote. |
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Test what AI says about you. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode “best Black Friday [category] deals Australia” and ” [your brand] Black Friday”. Fix wrong prices, policies or missing products at the source. Repeat weekly through November. |
PRIORITY PAGES |
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Launch an evergreen BFCM hub now. Use one permanent URL (e.g. /black-friday) and refresh it each year, not /bfcm-2026. Link it from your homepage, navigation and top collections, and from it to best sellers. Going live early gives Google and AI crawlers time to find it. |
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Match how shoppers search. Use “Black Friday [product] deals” and “Black Friday sale Australia” in title tags, H1s and copy. Write meta descriptions that name the offer and the deadline, e.g. “Up to 40% off sitewide. Black Friday sale ends Monday.” |
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PRODUCT DATA |
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Check your schema markup. Product, Offer and Review markup should show sale price, stock and ratings, plus shipping and returns details. Validate with Google’s Rich Results Test and confirm your theme updates the price when a sale applies. |
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Build reviews before the rush. Send review requests to recent customers now. AI assistants draw on reviews and third-party mentions when deciding what to recommend. |
SPEED AND UX |
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Pass Core Web Vitals on mobile. In PageSpeed Insights, focus on real-user data (LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1) rather than chasing a lab score of 90. Remove unused apps and compress hero images and banners. |
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Freeze and test two weeks out. Lock theme and app changes two weeks before launch, then test the full mobile journey on real devices: browse, filter, discount codes, Shop Pay, Afterpay and checkout |
November is nearly here. Google and AI assistants need time to crawl, index and trust your pages, and every week you wait is a week your competitors get ahead. Even small changes, like unblocking AI crawlers, fixing your product feed or launching your BFCM hub early, can make a measurable difference when peak traffic hits.
Want to go further? Whether it’s technical SEO, AEO, content strategy or a pre-BFCM audit, our team can help.
Posted by Cayley Segal
Cayley Segal is a Digital Marketing Specialist with a keen interest in search engine optimisation (SEO) and years of experience and practice in content creation and web design. She has shaped campaigns for brands such as Calvin Klein and Dell-SecureWorks, and now drives marketing strategy at Megantic. When she's not at her computer, you'll find her at a music gig.
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