Google is a key part of supplement brand Qualia Life’s marketing strategy — which means Chief Marketing Officer Lauren Alexander is keeping a close eye on the trend of more consumers using generative AI to search the internet.
After consumers hear about a supplement product in an advertisement or on social media, they often conduct some research before seriously considering buying or even shopping on a website, Alexander said.
“People do take an extra step in research and have been programmed to take that extra step in research on Google — up until all the explosion of AI … that kind of behavior is maybe changing for a lot of people,” she said.
To ensure it has a strong presence on Google, Qualia maintains a blog and has several educational pieces that explain the ingredients in its supplements and how those ingredients work in combination with one another. Traffic sources have fluctuated over the years, but about 10%-15% of QualiaLife.com’s traffic is from organic search, Alexander said.
“Google has been really important to me — as head of marketing — to make sure that we look good on Google, that we have the right hygiene going on,” Alexander said.
That said, as a 10-year-old brand, Qualia has endured several changes throughout the years: It changed its name, moved domains and weathered several Google algorithm updates. These events have all impacted its organic traffic from Google.
“The SEO game on Google is this constant moving target and it seems like two steps forward and then you get two steps back,” Alexander said.
Retailers gain more traffic from generative AI search platforms
Recently, the brand noticed an uptick in clicks from generative AI referral sites, including ChatGPT and Google’s AI Snippet feature. Qualia is not alone, as traffic to retailer websites from generative AI search platforms has increased 4,500% year over year, according to July 2025 data from software vendor Adobe.
Alexander is just starting to dip her toe into learning “the game” of AI search tactics, and how the marketing team can adjust the website’s framework to ensure AI platforms can easily read it. About six full-time employees are on its marketing team. Recently she hired SEO consultant Stephan Spencer to help generative AI sources find Qualia’s content and accurately talk about its brand and products.
“We have found a lot of things that it’s gotten very right and also some things that it’s gotten wrong that we need to either change our content or restructure some things so that the responses to questions are coming up correctly,” she said.
Alexander is eager to learn what queries consumers are typing into AI chat platforms and how they are interacting with results when they ask for a high quality supplement.
“We’re investing in getting our pages to be AI friendly, so to speak, and that our move-forward strategy is in support of a AI friendly strategy,” she said.
How much will organic Google and AI search strategies differ?
But that doesn’t mean Qualia is abandoning its strategy for traditional organic search. In fact, once the brand gets its arms around the best way to structure its pages, it will likely create content that is optimal for both AI and traditional search engines to scan and source.
“There’s not going to be like, this is the article for Google, this is the article for Perplexity,” she said.
At this early stage, Alexander is unsure of the quality of AI results. Google has updated its search results algorithm many times over the years to factor in the quality of a result, such as the type of source or if the page is mobile friendly.
“[Google has] constantly had to add new rules and exceptions and manipulate that a bit because there is so much win by ranking well, and so a lot of people invest on gaming the principles,” she said.
Alexander is unsure if AI algorithms have put some of those similar guardrails, such as factoring in the sourcing of reputable publications. She gives the example of Oxford linking to a blog and BuzzFeed linking to a blog. Google will understand that if Oxford links to a blog, it is likely legitimate in some way, and award that blog with a higher rank than if BuzzFeed linked to a blog.
AI is more than just the new shiny tool
All of the AI platforms combined generate about 5% of Qualia’s web traffic. This is small, but it is growing. While sometimes marketers can get overeager about hopping on the latest trend about where the eyeballs are, Alexander aims for a disciplined approach.
“I want to have a purpose for it, a business case, I want to understand that people are going in, I want to staff it and I want to have a strategy behind it,” she said.
She likes to think of each new platform, such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and now AI search, as its own physical store front. In the same way a merchant needs to staff a store, clean it and engage with it each day, retailers need to maintain each platform in the same way. If a retailer neglects a channel, it reflects poorly on the brand, the same way a dusty store with minimal staff training would, she said.
“There’s all of this head swinging in marketing that’s like, oh, this is the new thing to log into and this is the new practice,” she said. “But because of my beliefs in how these work, I don’t jump on every new platform instantly.”
Regardless, AI search does not seem to be a shiny fad to hop on.
“The way I am using it and the way that our team is using it and the way that I see the clicks and coming in, no,” she said about AI being another marketing fad. “I’m starting to build the research, the storefront, the materials, the staff so that this can be a channel that makes sense.”
Network
