How Premium Brands Get Found in AI Search

AI search is changing what it means for a retail brand to be discovered.

For premium retailers, the challenge is not only visibility.

It is visibility for the right customer, in the right context, with the right brand story attached.

A shopper searching for "black dress", "new oven", or "sofa for a family home" is not always looking for the cheapest answer. They may care about quality, service, sustainability, delivery, advice, returns, warranties, store availability, or even whether the brand feels like it fits their life.

AI-powered discovery surfaces and relies upon a lot more of that context.

In this conversation, SearchPilot founder Will Critchlow sits down with Christine Ullmann from John Lewis to talk about what AI search means for premium retail brands.

They discuss why SEO teams need to think beyond keywords, how brand sentiment and entities shape discovery, what happens when AI starts comparing more than price, and why retailers need to test both their tactics and their metrics.

This session is for SEO, ecommerce, product, brand, and digital leaders working in retail who need a clearer way to think about search visibility in an AI-assisted buying journey.

If your brand is not necessarily trying to win every shopper, but is focused on the right shopper, this conversation will help you think through what to measure, what to test, and how to explain the value of SEO inside the business.

WEBINAR

Free · 45 min · Replay included

Wednesday 17th June • 5 pm BST / 12 pm ET / 9 am PT

Register Now

Why "visibility" is too vague on its own

Showing up is not enough. Christine and Will discuss why premium retailers need to ask: visible for what, to whom, and with what sentiment attached?

Why keywords are no longer enough

Keywords still have a role, but they do not give certainty on customer demand. AI-assisted search makes the real query more personal, more contextual, and harder to reduce to one search volume number.

How brand, entities, and sentiment affect discovery

AI systems and search engines are getting better at understanding meaning across pages, publishers, product data, and brand mentions. That makes your wider digital ecosystem harder to ignore.

What premium retailers need to make clear

If your value is quality, service, sustainability, advice, warranty, delivery, or in-store support, those signals need to be present across the places search and AI systems use to understand you.

Why product pages are changing their role

AI chats, Merchant Center, product search, and shopping results are pushing more discovery toward product detail pages. That changes how teams should think about product content, fact sheets, internal linking, and supporting resources.

How to explain SEO value to finance and leadership

An uplift in clicks may excite an SEO team, but finance will ask what it means in money. This session covers how to define value, discuss uncertainty, and make SEO results credible to other parts of the business.

SVP Digital & Ecommerce
VP of Marketing / Global Head of Marketing
Head of SEO
Director of Ecommerce, Director of Digital Marketing
Head of Product
Anyone responsible for ambitious SEO targets who needs a practical, proven framework

Christine Ullmann is Head of SEO & Organic Growth at John Lewis, where she works at the intersection of search strategy, ecommerce, brand, and AI-led discovery.

She has more than 15 years of experience scaling organic growth across complex ecommerce and travel brands, including previous roles at Farfetch, Wolf & Badger, The Sole Supplier, and ShopStyle. Her work focuses on how brands stay visible as search moves from blue links toward AI-generated answers, product discovery, and more fragmented customer journeys.

Christine also holds a PhD in Social Anthropology, which shapes how she thinks about search beyond rankings: as a way to understand demand, culture, customer intent, and how brands are represented across the wider digital ecosystem.