Hey ChatGPT, Where Should I Buy a Kid's Bike?

Picture a parent on the couch the week before Thanksgiving, phone in hand, typing a question into ChatGPT or Google's AI Mode: where should I buy a good bike for a seven-year-old near me? A few years ago that question went into a search bar and came back as a page of blue links. Now an AI tool reads the web on the shopper's behalf and returns a short answer with a couple of suggestions and a link or two.

For a bike shop, that answer has become something akin to your front window... And more and more people are peering in from it. According to Deloitte, 29% of holiday shoppers say they'd try a brick and mortar an AI tool suggested, even if they'd never heard of it. The good news is that showing up in those answers doesn't take a crash course in AI or a new set of tools. It mostly comes down to the fundamentals that already help shoppers find you, done well and kept up to date.

What the numbers say

Adobe, which tracks more than a trillion visits to U.S. retail websites, expects traffic from AI tools to retail sites to grow 130% this holiday season compared with last year. The biggest jump is expected on Thanksgiving (up 159%), followed by Black Friday (up 95%) and Cyber Monday (up 88%). That growth starts from a small base, and AI is still one channel among many, but the direction is hard to miss.

Shoppers seem to like what they get from these tools. In an Adobe survey of 5,000 consumers, 77% of people who had used AI for online shopping said it made them more confident in their purchase, and 69% said they were less likely to return what they bought.

Deloitte's 2026 Holiday Retail Survey of 4,000 U.S. consumers fills in the rest of the picture. Thirty-nine percent of shoppers say generative AI is their primary tool for at least one part of holiday shopping, such as gift ideas, product reviews, or price comparisons. Among Gen Z and millennials the share is about half, and those two groups are expected to account for half of all holiday spending for the first time this year.

That 29% is the number most worth a bike shop owner's attention: nearly a third of shoppers say they would try a retailer they had never heard of based on an AI recommendation. At the same time, only 16% would let AI complete a purchase for them. People are using these tools to research and build a shortlist, then making the final call themselves, and that final call is where a local shop with real expertise has always done well.

How AI tools decide which shops to mention

A whole industry has sprung up selling secret formulas for "AI optimization." Google, for its part, has been unusually plain about it. Its own guidance for AI Overviews and AI Mode says the usual SEO best practices still apply, and that there are no additional requirements or special optimizations needed to appear. You don't need new AI files, special markup, or extra schema. (Spoiler: the homework hasn't changed much. It just got graded more often.)

What these tools do need is clear, accurate information they can read. Google's own list of best practices covers pages that can be crawled and indexed, important content written out as text, structured data that matches what's actually on the page, and an up-to-date Business Profile. Google also describes a technique it calls query fan-out, where the AI runs several related searches across subtopics to build one answer. For a question like "best place to buy a kids' bike near me," that can mean pulling your hours, your reviews, your service pages, and your product listings all at once.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other assistants use their own methods and don't publish them in the same detail. Across all of them, the shops in the best position are the ones with a website and a local listing that answer a shopper's questions plainly.

What your shop can do before the rush

The best place to start is your Google Business Profile, since it feeds both regular search and Google's AI answers. Holiday hours, current photos, the services you offer, and a few recent replies to reviews take an afternoon to update and tell both shoppers and AI tools that the shop is open, active, and paying attention.

From there, look at whether your website answers gift questions in plain text. A shopper asking an AI tool about a first bike for a seven-year-old is really asking about wheel sizes, price ranges, and whether someone will help with the fit. A simple gift guide page that covers kids' bike sizing, gift cards, and service packages gives an AI tool something concrete to quote. It also fits how people are giving this year: Deloitte found half of shoppers plan to gift an experience, and 79% of them want to pair it with a physical item. A bike fit or a tune-up package with a new helmet is about as natural a pairing as it gets.

Get your holiday promotions written out on your site early, too. Adobe expects Thanksgiving to bring the season's best online deals in sporting goods, and it's also the day AI shopping traffic is expected to spike the most. A sale that lives only on a sign in the window or an image on Instagram is invisible to a tool that reads text.

Finally, run the test yourself. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google's AI Mode where to buy a kid's bike in your town and see what comes back. If your shop isn't in the answer, or the details are wrong, you've found your to-do list.

The shop still closes the sale

AI tools are getting good at building a shortlist, and shoppers are clearly willing to lean on them for the early research. The decision itself still belongs to a person, and that person still wants someone who knows how to size a kid for a bike and will stand behind the purchase. Independent bike shops have always been good at that part. The job this season is making sure the shortlist includes you.

Workstand builds websites for independent bike dealers with real product data, local SEO, and holiday-ready marketing built in. If you'd like to see how your shop could show up, request a demo.

Sources

• Adobe, "Adobe: U.S. Holiday Shopping Season to Hit Record $275.1 Billion Online, Rising 6.7% YoY," September 28, 2026. news.adobe.com
• Deloitte, "2026 Deloitte Holiday Retail Survey," survey of 4,000 U.S. consumers fielded Aug. 26 to Sept. 10, 2026. deloitte.com
• Google Search Central, "AI features and your website." developers.google.com