Episode Number:

73

May 18, 2026

In this episode of The eCom Growth Show, Danan Coleman interviews Adrian Nikolov of Haide Digital to explore how AI is changing eCommerce discovery, why traditional SEO is evolving, and what brands must do now to stay visible when shoppers ask AI for product recommendations.

Meet Adrian: The Organic Search Expert Helping Brands Prepare for AI Discovery

Adrian Nikolov has spent more than 17 years in organic search, much of it inside product companies. Today, he leads Haide Digital, where he helps brands understand how AI search, Google’s evolving shopping ecosystem, and modern SEO are reshaping the way customers discover products online.

AI Search Is Not Just “Google With Smarter Answers”

Adrian explains that AI product discovery works very differently from traditional search.

  • Old Google search ranked pages based on links, keywords, authority, and relevance.
  • AI tools scan many sources at once, including product pages, Reddit threads, reviews, social media, and YouTube.
  • Instead of showing 10 blue links, AI often returns only two or three product recommendations.
Big Shift: The new goal is not just ranking on page one. It is getting cited, trusted, and recommended inside AI-generated answers.

Topical Authority Still Matters, But Everywhere

Danan and Adrian agree that the fundamentals of SEO still matter, but the playing field has expanded.

  • Your website still needs strong content.
  • Social media, YouTube, Reddit, reviews, and third-party mentions all contribute to trust.
  • Brands must become known as the authority in their category, not just on their own website.
Modern SEO Move: Adrian calls this “search everywhere optimization.” Your brand needs to show up wherever buyers and AI systems look for answers.

Why YouTube and Reddit Are Becoming Critical

Adrian highlights two platforms eCommerce brands can no longer ignore: YouTube and Reddit.

  • YouTube content gives AI models rich transcripts and explanations about your product.
  • Reddit and forums provide user-generated context, opinions, and real-world discussions.
  • AI tools often pull from these sources when deciding which products feel trustworthy.
Key Insight: Your customers may not discover you from your product page first. They may discover you through what the internet says about you.

Three Reasons Your Brand May Be Invisible to AI

Adrian breaks AI invisibility into three major problems.

  • Your site may be blocking AI crawlers through settings like Cloudflare protections.
  • Your website may be too dependent on heavy JavaScript or client-side rendering.
  • Your brand may lack third-party trust signals such as reviews, mentions, Reddit discussions, and external content.
Practical Check: View your page source and search for your own page content. If the text is not visible in the source code, AI systems may struggle to read it.

Google Wants to Own More of the Shopping Journey

One of the biggest topics in the episode is Google’s expanding eCommerce layer.

Adrian explains that Google’s Shopping Graph already contains billions of product listings, with many listings refreshed frequently. As AI shopping evolves, buyers may rely on agents to search, compare, notify, and eventually buy products for them.

  • Google wants to keep more shopping activity inside its own ecosystem.
  • AI agents may compare products without users ever visiting your website.
  • Checkout may increasingly happen inside AI-driven experiences.
Reality Check: Brands do not need to panic yet, but they do need to become visible, trusted, and easy for AI systems to understand.

What eCommerce Brands Should Do Right Now

Adrian recommends starting with three practical steps.

  • Search for your own products inside ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and other AI tools the way a buyer would.
  • Audit your product schema and structured data so search engines and AI systems understand your products.
  • Check whether your website is server-side rendered and readable by crawlers.
Action Step: Ask AI tools the same questions your customers would ask. If your brand does not appear, start investigating visibility, technical setup, and trust signals.

Don’t Connect Everything, Build Clear Entities

Danan asks whether all of his brands, podcasts, and projects should be connected together.

Adrian’s advice: not necessarily.

  • Keep separate brands focused on their own categories.
  • Avoid linking unrelated entities in ways that confuse Google.
  • Build the founder or personal brand as the unifying figure when appropriate.
Smart Positioning: Your brand should be clear, distinct, and easy for both humans and AI systems to understand.

AI Discovery Rewards Real Brands

The biggest takeaway from Adrian is that AI search rewards brands that are already doing the hard work of building trust.

  • Create useful content.
  • Show up on YouTube.
  • Build real conversations around your product.
  • Earn reviews and third-party mentions.
  • Make your site technically readable.
  • Strengthen your category authority.
Bottom Line: AI is not replacing brand building. It is exposing which brands have done it well.

Connect With Adrian Nikolov

Final Thoughts

AI is changing how shoppers find, compare, and trust products online. For eCommerce brands, the challenge is no longer just ranking, it is becoming visible, understandable, and credible across every source AI uses to make recommendations.

As Adrian made clear, the brands that win will be the ones that build authority everywhere, clean up their technical foundations, and make it easy for AI to recognize why their products deserve to be recommended.

Stay tuned for more episodes of The eCom Growth Show, where eCommerce operators learn how to adapt to the future of product discovery, build stronger brand authority, and stay visible in a world increasingly shaped by AI.