How to Prepare Your AI Visibility for Black Friday in 2025
To prepare for Black Friday 2025, you must (audit and improve your AI visibility now, build dedicated Black-Friday content that is optimized both for traditional SEO and generative search (GEO), and ensure your technical/structural foundations (schema, crawlability, RAG-readiness) are in place so that AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini can cite you when someone asks “What are the best Black Friday 2025 deals in [your category?”
Why These Three Steps Matter (and the AI-SEO shift you can’t ignore)
The shifting landscape of search
Traditional SEO still matters, but is no longer enough. According to research from April 2025 by Capgemini, a quarter of French consumers already planned to use AI for their Black Friday and holiday shopping. (Capgemini)
Meanwhile, best-practice sources such as Ahrefs describe “AI visibility” as how discoverable your brand is in AI platforms and whether it gets cited in AI responses. (Ahrefs)
And the term Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is increasingly used to describe the process of optimising for AI-powered search, rather than just traditional SERPs. (Found)
All of this means: your organic search channel is undergoing a transformation. If you’re not adapting, you may be losing traffic not because you’ve lost relevance, but because your brand isn’t visible in the AI discovery layer.
Why Black Friday is a strategic moment
The holiday period, and especially Black Friday, magnifies these dynamics. In a recent article by Conductor (Nov 2025), AI-assisted online shopping is predicted to grow 520 % this holiday season. (Conductor)
A second article by Kiaora Digital (Oct 2025) about Black Friday SEO in Australia/New Zealand emphasises that the brands who build visibility ahead of the sale will win, not those who wait. (kiaoradigital.com.au)
In short: Black Friday is not just another campaign-week. It is one of the few times in the year when purchase intent, search volume, and AI-driven discovery align, and if you’re invisible in AI, you’ll miss out.
Recovering traffic lost to AI
Because AI answer engines can summarise, recommend, and cite brands without requiring a click, traditional analytics may not capture the full story. According to Amsive (June 2025), keywords triggering AI Overviews saw an average click-through-rate drop of 15.49%. (Amsive)
What this means for you: you may see fewer clicks, but more value in being cited or mentioned in an AI answer. Your role shifts from “rank-first on Google” to “be the brand that AI models trust and cite when someone asks a relevant question.”
That’s exactly what the agency indexLab specialises in: helping brands recover traffic by getting cited in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity rather than relying only on classic rankings.
The Three Things You Can Do Today for Black Friday 2025
1. Audit & Improve Your AI Visibility
What to do
Use an AI visibility audit (prompt-level tracking) to discover where your brand or domain appears, and where it doesn’t, in AI-generated answers. For example, tools like Semrush’s AI Visibility toolkit. (Backlinko)
Identify core prompts your customers might ask: e.g., “What are the best Black Friday deals in [your category] 2025?”, “Which [product type] to buy on Black Friday 2025?”, “When is Black Friday 2025 in [your country]?”
Benchmark how competitors are cited or mentioned in AI answers. Use that to find gaps you can exploit.
Why this matters
When you optimise for AI-discovery (GEO), you’re dealing with three layers:
Discoverability: can the LLM retrieve your content?
Citatability: does the engine consider you a trusted source?
Actionability: does your content lead to conversions or clear next-steps when cited?
2. Create Black Friday-Specific Content Optimised for AI & SEO
What to do
Publish a dedicated “Black Friday 2025” hub or blog page in your category or vertical, well in advance (e.g., by mid-October) so search engines & AI bots can crawl and index.
Structure the page with high-intent questions and answers (FAQs, lists, deal summarisation).
Add schema markup (Offer, Product, FAQ) so machines can read your structured deal details.
Incorporate conversational language and entity references, exactly the way users ask AI: “What’s the best value [product] on Black Friday 2025?”
Link your hub to category-specific pages, and ensure the URLs are clean & consistent: e.g.,
/black-friday-2025/electronics/or/black-friday-2025/your-vertical/.Use real-life examples and case studies (for instance from your own agency’s clients) to add depth and credibility.
Why this matters
Content published just days before the sale often fails to gain traction because AI bots and search engines haven’t had enough time to crawl, index and trust the page.
Additionally, AI discovery favours content that directly answers questions and is cited by multiple sources, not just generic marketing pages. Conductor’s holiday AI SEO tips recommend “Create holiday-specific landing pages that answer high-intent queries directly” and “Include structured data so both traditional search engines and LLMs can understand your offers.”
By creating your Black Friday hub early, you maximise the chance AI systems will surface your content when someone asks relevant queries.
3. Secure Your Technical & Structural Foundations for AI-Ready Discovery
What to do
Ensure AI bots and LLM retrieval systems can crawl your site: check robots.txt, meta robots tags, avoid blocking crawling by unofficial AI bot user-agents. Conductor warns some sites blocked AI bots earlier this year.
Audit your website speed (especially mobile), architecture (clean URLs, logical internal linking), and fix broken links or redirect issues.
Implement structured data (schema.org) for offers, events (Black Friday deals), products and FAQs. This helps both search engines and LLM retrieval systems parse your content.
Monitor AI bot crawl logs if possible: some AI search engines’ bots are now crawling more frequently than Google’s.
Map internal linking so your Black Friday hub and category pages are clearly signposted from your homepage and main navigation. This signals authority and helps structure for machine readability.
Why this matters
Even the best content won’t succeed if machines can’t access or interpret it. AI search systems rely on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) which uses live crawlable pages plus internal databases.
Moreover, the foundations of good SEO (speed, structure, mobile-first) remain valid, they just have additional importance now when AI discovery is layered on top.
Getting these structural tasks done early gives you time to refine and iterate rather than scrambling at the last minute.
Table: Your Three Key Actions for Black Friday 2025
Action | What You Do | Why It Works for AI SEO / GEO |
|---|---|---|
Audit & Improve AI Visibility | Run a prompt-level audit, identify missing brand prompts, map competitor visibility gaps | Ensures you are discoverable and trusted in AI answers rather than invisible |
Build Black Friday-Specific Content | Publish a hub + category pages, answer questions, include FAQs, deep-link pages, add schema | Creates content with high intent, machine-readable, timely, and optimised for AI discovery |
Secure Technical & Structural Foundations | Fix crawlability, site speed, architecture, structured data, internal linking | Ensures AI bots and retrieval systems can access, parse, and cite your content; foundational for GEO |
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I make my brand visible in AI search results before Black Friday 2025?
Start with an AI Visibility Audit to identify where your brand appears in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity answers. Then, optimise your content for Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), publish Black Friday-specific pages that answer key shopper questions and include structured data so AI tools can cite your site.
When should I publish my Black Friday 2025 content for maximum visibility?
Ideally by mid-October 2025. AI bots and Google need time to crawl, index, and trust your pages. Early publishing also lets your content gain authority and increases your chance of being cited in AI answers during peak shopping weeks.
What technical steps help AI tools understand my offers?
Ensure your site has structured data (schema.org) for products, deals, and FAQs, confirm AI bots can crawl your pages, and maintain a fast, mobile-friendly site. These steps make your offers machine-readable, boosting both SEO and AI visibility.
Conclusion
If you want to prepare your AI visibility for Black Friday 2025, the strategy is clear: start now with an audit of your AI visibility, create dedicated Black Friday-specific content optimised for both human readers and AI discovery systems, and make sure your technical foundations are solid so machines can access and understand your content.
By doing these three things you align with the shift from traditional SEO to GEO (generative engine optimisation) and position your brand to be seen, trusted and chosen by AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.
👉 Book your AI Visibility Audit with IndexLab today and make sure your brand isn’t invisible in the age of AI search