Sunny Ray hosts Geoff Atkinson, founder of Huckabuy, to explore the shift from SEO to AEO (answer engine optimization) as AI chatbots increasingly reshape how people search. Atkinson explains that customers are still buying products and software, but they now discover and research them through conversations with AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok rather than typing keywords into Google. He argues most brands are invisible to these AI crawlers because their sites rely on JavaScript, which AI bots cannot read, and lack structured data, the machine readable format AI engines trust as authoritative. Atkinson traces his own expertise back to Overstock, where he helped grow organic search from zero to $300 million under mentor Patrick Byrne. He describes AI crawlers as far less sophisticated than Google, visiting sites infrequently and needing structured data spoon fed to them. Atkinson warns that roughly 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies are unprepared for this shift, creating major risk for incumbents and opportunity for smaller competitors who can claim AI recommended authority first. The conversation sets up a planned part two episode.
AI search is replacing Google, and most brands are invisible to it. Geoff Atkinson explains how to fix that fast.
What are you building now, and why does it matter?
I'm not building anything new right now, I'm actually trying to sell my company. Over 12 years I built Huckabuy, the technical connection between websites and search engines. Most sites are built for humans, not for Google bots or AI crawlers, and that dictates how many visitors you get. We built the translation layer using structured data markup, dynamic rendering that strips JavaScript, and page speed optimization so sites communicate cleanly with search and AI engines.
At Overstock, you took organic search from zero to $300 million. What did you understand about crawlers that the rest of the company did not?
Our CEO Patrick Byrne realized organic search shouldn't be treated differently than paid channels just because it used a different formula. We were spending a million dollars a month on paid search while SEO delivered better customers with higher lifetime value. He gave me an unlimited budget, mostly for engineers, to rebuild our site so Google could actually understand it. Two months after I learned about SEO, we had a thirty million dollar channel overnight, which grew tenfold over three years.
You describe your work as spoon feeding crawlers instead of making them work. When did that framing first land for you?
That realization hit around 2006, when Google Shopping opened an API for product data and we jumped on it. Google's crawlers have huge resources, our site gets crawled for three to five minutes daily, but ChatGPT crawls us once every two months for under a minute. AI crawlers also cannot read JavaScript, which powers 65 percent of the internet. They are essentially infants compared to Google, so you have to spoon feed them structured data whenever they show up.
Is structured data the same as metadata?
Structured data is similar to metadata but it's authoritative. It's held in a JSON LD packet, ideally under 20 kilobytes, placed high in the page code, and formatted identically across every site. For a product it lists the brand, name, sizes, discounts, and reviews. Google and AI engines trust structured data enough to actually use it in results, like showing a sports score or product ratings, because it's the authoritative version of the page content.
Why aren't more companies showing up in AI search results?
It's a massive blind spot. Around 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies aren't doing this and are at major risk, their brand recognition is falling off a cliff without them realizing it. When I talk to CEOs, CMOs, and CROs about why revenue is dropping, they've never heard this explanation before, but it makes perfect sense once I walk them through it. It's a simple technical problem that needs fixing, and whoever fixes it first can own their industry's AI results.
How does AI search compare to Google as a sales channel?
A long conversation with an AI engine that ends in a product recommendation is the highest converting channel I've seen in my twenty years of online marketing. It's different from a number one Google ranking, which gives authority and a high chance of conversion, because AI recommendations carry even more weight. The risk is real: if you're first to market with this in your industry, you can own the AI results before competitors catch on.
Where can people learn more about you and Huckabuy?
My company is Huckabuy, spelled H U C K A B U Y like buy a product. We built a free tool where you drop in your homepage URL and it scores how well your site performs for AI crawlers on a scale of zero to one hundred. Huckabuy itself scores a 99, while Salesforce scores a three, so they're at huge risk. I'm also active on LinkedIn, so message me there if you want to connect.
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