May 28, 2026 – We all have Shopping Managers available these days with Google’s transition from individual searches to AI finds. For instance, Amazon’s Alexa finds products that match your past order history. Recently, I received the closing sales pitch from Alexa that Watt-Ahh will provide great hydration for me as a tennis player. The cozy “personal” exchange is intended to build trust on AI product recommendations.
The old SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is being replaced with AI “semantic coverage” (customer reviews and Q&A, videos, use-case relevance, product comparison positioning, customer satisfaction signals and more). Quality brands are losing visibility because AI does not fully understand their products, misses key use cases, lacks confidence recommending them and favors competing products with strong semantic coverage. To compete, small businesses selling on Amazon likely will have to seek “Works with Alexa” or WWA certification involving third-party product testing, maintenance of positive operational and customer service metrics, and fulfillment of ongoing recertification deadlines (keep the official WWA badge posted on their Amazon stores) to come up as a “find” for customers.
Fortunately, the majority of our Amazon customers did not come from SEO (or key words like “bottled water”) but instead they typed in directly the brand name Watt-Ahh because their friends and healthcare practitioners made the recommendation to drink Watt-Ahh. If a customer queries about Watt-Ahh, Alexa does however provide some good information largely referencing our blogs.
Critical Thinking vs. Fast Answers
The question is whether or not AI shopping managers actually recommend the best products that perfectly fit the needs of the customer? Could AI become a truncated and anemic version of all of the possibility of quality products on the market?
I personally enjoy the SEO and like the challenge and freedom of reviewing the testimonials of other competing products that may or may not have their own tv commercials. I realize it is time consuming but I feel a sense of accomplishment of discovering the best product choices for Rob and me. It does seem to cut down on product returns.
Rob also gives me SEO challenges to find esoteric parts with definitive specifications that he needs to build his machines. AI may help but so far it is not accurate on directly finding his unique specifications.
Searching and learning about a topic and relying less on the immediate answers from AI seem to build a more durable human intelligence with greater recall (good to remember to reorder the same product next time). It also exercises our critical thinking to judge (or back check) whether or not AI is accurate on its information provided.
Anyway, whether you use the old SEO or new AI Shopping Manager, we appreciate you finding Watt-Ahh online.