TL;DR
AI search and traditional SEO share some foundations (quality content, technical health) but differ in critical ways: AI can't run JavaScript, brand mentions matter as much as backlinks, direct answers beat keyword density, and there are no "positions" to rank for.
Same goal, different mechanics
Both traditional SEO and AI search optimization aim to increase discoverability. But the mechanics are fundamentally different. Commerce teams that apply their Google playbook to AI search will fail — not because the strategies are wrong, but because the systems work differently.
What stays the same
Content quality matters in both. Technical site health matters in both. Authority signals (backlinks, mentions, brand recognition) matter in both. These foundations don't change. If your site is slow, broken, or thin, neither Google nor AI will reward you.
What changes completely
Rendering: Google's crawler executes JavaScript. AI crawlers don't. A page that ranks #1 on Google might be completely invisible to ChatGPT if it relies on client-side rendering.
Rankings vs citations: Google gives you a position in a list. AI either cites you or doesn't. There's no "position 3" — there's cited and uncited. This means ranking improvement is gradual in SEO but binary in AI search.
Keywords vs answers: Google matches keyword signals. AI matches answer quality. A page with perfect keyword optimization but a mediocre answer will lose to a page with no keyword optimization but a direct, authoritative answer.
Backlinks vs brand mentions: Google weights backlinks heavily. AI search weights brand mentions — including mentions without links. A press article that mentions your brand name without linking to you still builds AI authority.
The practical implications
Don't abandon traditional SEO — it still drives the majority of search traffic. But don't assume your SEO agency is handling AI visibility. Most aren't. Ask them: "Are you tracking our AI citations? Are our pages server-rendered? Is our structured data in HTML or GTM?" If they can't answer, they're optimizing for 2019.
The ideal approach is parallel optimization: maintain Google rankings while building AI citation infrastructure. The foundational work (server rendering, structured data, entity consistency) benefits both channels.