Agentic Search Optimization

A chatbot that recommends a product ends its work when the person reads the answer. An agent keeps going: it opens a website, compares options, fills in a form, and sometimes pays. Between October 2024 and October 2026, AI companies, payment networks, and retailers built the software for that second kind of work, and the practice of getting chosen by an agent acquired its own name. The Origins of GEO introduces that name. This chapter tells the longer story of the agents and the commerce systems around them.

October 2024 to January 2025: Agents Learn to Use a Browser

On October 22, 2024, Anthropic released computer use in public beta on its API. Developers could direct Claude 3.5 Sonnet to use a computer the way a person does, by looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text. Anthropic called the capability experimental and, at times, cumbersome and error-prone.¹ On November 25, 2024, it open-sourced the Model Context Protocol, a standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives.⁹

On January 23, 2025, OpenAI released Operator, a research preview for Pro users in the United States. Operator used its own browser, looked at pages through screenshots, and acted with a mouse and keyboard, so it worked on websites without custom integrations. OpenAI said Operator would ask the user to take over for logins, payment details, and CAPTCHAs, and would request approval before finalizing an order. It listed DoorDash, Instacart, OpenTable, Priceline, StubHub, Thumbtack, and Uber among the companies it was collaborating with.² On July 17, 2025, OpenAI folded Operator into ChatGPT as agent mode.²

OpenAI Introduces Operator

April to October 2025: Payment Networks and Protocols

A browser agent that clicks through a website can reach a checkout page, but it cannot prove to a bank or a merchant that a person authorized the purchase. The next wave of announcements addressed that gap. On April 30, 2025, Visa introduced Visa Intelligent Commerce, which opens its network to developers building agents and lets each consumer set limits. It listed Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Samsung, and Stripe among its AI partners.³ On September 16, 2025, Google announced the Agent Payments Protocol, an open protocol that uses cryptographically signed mandates to record a user's instructions and supports cards, stablecoins, and bank transfers.¹⁰

On September 29, 2025, OpenAI introduced Instant Checkout in ChatGPT, powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which it built with Stripe and open-sourced the same day. U.S. users could buy directly from U.S. Etsy sellers in the chat, with more than a million Shopify merchants listed as coming soon. Merchants paid a small fee on completed purchases and stayed the merchant of record. OpenAI said product results were organic and unsponsored, and that Instant Checkout items were not preferred, although whether a merchant had enabled Instant Checkout was one of the factors it considered when ranking merchants that sell the same product.^4,11

OpenAI Introduces Instant Checkout

On October 14, 2025, Walmart announced a partnership with OpenAI that would let customers shop Walmart through ChatGPT with Instant Checkout.⁵ On December 10, 2025, Shopify introduced Agentic Storefronts, which syndicate a merchant's products to AI platforms including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot through Shopify Catalog, with the merchant remaining the merchant of record.¹²

January 2026: Google Launches the Universal Commerce Protocol

On January 11, 2026, Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open standard for agentic commerce across discovery, buying, and post-purchase support. It was co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, and endorsed by more than 20 other companies, including Adyen, American Express, Best Buy, Flipkart, Macy's, Mastercard, Stripe, The Home Depot, Visa, and Zalando. Google said UCP would power a checkout feature on eligible product listings in AI Mode and the Gemini app, using Google Pay, with retailers staying the seller of record.⁶

Google Announces the Universal Commerce Protocol

March 2026: Instant Checkout Gives Way to Apps

On March 20, 2026, CNBC reported that OpenAI had confirmed it was ending Instant Checkout in favor of working with retailers to build dedicated apps inside ChatGPT, which send users to the retailer's own site to finish a purchase. CNBC noted that product selection in Instant Checkout had remained limited six months after launch.⁷ Modern Retail reported that several people involved told it the program did not drive sales, and quoted OpenAI's March 24 statement that the first version of Instant Checkout did not offer the flexibility it wanted to provide. An Etsy spokesperson said Instant Checkout had not produced a large volume of sales, but that ChatGPT was a useful discovery tool that sent referral traffic.¹³

The Paypers reported on March 24, 2026, that Walmart had ended its Instant Checkout pilot after offering about 200,000 products from November 2025, because the in-chat purchases produced conversion rates roughly three times lower than those of users who clicked through to Walmart's own website. Walmart planned to embed its own assistant, Sparky, in ChatGPT and Google Gemini, with purchases completed inside Walmart's system.¹⁴ The episode moved the checkout step back to the retailer while leaving discovery with the AI platform.

June to October 2026: The First Framework and Wider Adoption

The first Agentic Search Optimization framework was published by First Page Sage on June 15, 2026.⁸ It divides an agent's work into retrieval, evaluation, and action, and The Origins of GEO describes each stage.

The Agentic Search Optimization Framework

Other companies were already describing the same ground. When Profound announced its Series C on February 24, 2026, its chief executive, James Cadwallader, said brands would need agents of their own to deal with the agents acting for consumers.¹⁵ Adobe's April 28 release described solutions for SEO, GEO, and agentic search optimization.¹⁶ On September 2, 2026, Anthropic published a blueprint of ready-made shopper and merchant agents for Claude, with Accenture, Mastercard, Visa, and Shopify as early users.¹⁷ Scrunch, which raised a $15 million Series A in July 2025, wrote then that discovery was shifting to AI agents that compress and summarize instead of browsing, and that content has to be structured for how they work.[^scrunchA]

The platforms kept building access for agents in the autumn. On September 8, Stripe announced that Meta's Muse agent could check out for U.S. consumers at more than one million businesses that accept Link.¹⁸ On September 28, Shopify opened checkout to browser-based AI agents, which can read the checkout page, update it, and submit an order with the buyer's authorization.¹⁹ On October 21, Walmart announced agent profiles, spending limits, and a gateway for agents shopping at Walmart and Sam's Club, with terms that block agents that do not follow them.²⁰ Deloitte's U.S. head of AI, Jim Rowan, described the practice on October 28 as the next step after GEO and said agents will favor brands whose products, pricing, and data are machine-readable and instantly verifiable.²¹

Key Organizations