Microsoft Clarity: The Free Tool Every Hot Tub Dealer Needs for AI Search Visibility

TL;DR: A growing share of ecommerce traffic (5-7% for most brands we work with) is now coming from AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot, and that number is only going up. Two free Microsoft tools, Clarity and Bing Webmaster Tools, let you see exactly which questions are driving AI traffic to your site and whether your product and category pages actually answer them. Set them up this week, review the data monthly, and use what you learn to close content gaps before your competitors do.

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People don’t shop for products the way they used to. A decade ago, someone expecting their first child might type “best baby monitor” into Google and scroll through ten blue links. Today, that same parent is just as likely to open ChatGPT and ask something like “what’s the safest video monitor for a nursery with a two-story house” and get a direct, synthesized answer, complete with product recommendations, pulled together in seconds.

That shift matters more than most ecommerce brands realize. If your brand isn’t part of the answer AI gives that parent, you’re not losing a click. You’re losing the sale entirely, because your customer may never make it to a traditional search results page at all.

This is what we mean when we talk about AEO and GEO, answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization. It’s the practice of making sure your products, your category pages, and your content are structured and positioned in a way that AI platforms want to cite when someone asks a question your ideal customer is actually asking.

Where Things Stand Right Now

Across the ecommerce brands we work with, somewhere between seven and nine percent of total website traffic is currently coming from an AI platform. That includes ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot. On its own, five to seven percent doesn’t sound dramatic. But look at the trend line, not the snapshot. That number has climbed steadily every quarter, and consumer products is the exact area where people lean on AI to research before they buy. At the end of the day, nobody wants to buy the wrong product.

Brands that build visibility into AI answers now, while the competition is still thin, are setting themselves up to capture that demand automatically for years. Brands that wait are going to spend 2027 trying to catch up to competitors who started in 2026.

The Two Free Tools That Show You Where You Actually Stand

You can’t optimize what you can’t measure, and most ecommerce brands have zero visibility into how they’re currently performing in AI search. That changes with two free tools, both from Microsoft.

The first is Microsoft Clarity, and it’s the more powerful of the two for understanding your AI search footprint. The second is Bing Webmaster Tools. It’s worth noting that this data comes specifically from Microsoft’s ecosystem, Copilot and its partner network, but the patterns you uncover here are directly applicable to how your brand shows up across every major AI platform, not just Microsoft’s.

As Karen Martinez, our SEO team lead, puts it:

If you haven’t installed or dug into the AEO and GEO data found in Microsoft Clarity or Bing Webmaster Tools, you’re leaving additional brand awareness, traffic and revenue on the table. This should be a top priority for every brand to work on this week and then schedule time each month to review and optimize.

What You’ll Find Once You Start Digging

Inside Microsoft Clarity, three reports matter most for an ecommerce brand.

The AI Visibility Report shows how many citations your site is earning across AI platforms, along with your share of authority compared to competing brands in your category. It also surfaces referral traffic and, most valuably, grounding queries. A grounding query is the literal phrase someone typed into an AI platform that caused it to pull information from your site.

When brands first look at their grounding queries, they usually recognize a lot of familiar short-tail terms, things like “convertible car seat” or “baby monitor,” the same keywords they’ve been targeting in Google for years. That’s expected. But keep watching, and a different pattern emerges. AI queries tend to run much longer and far more conversational than typical search terms, often stretching to ten or fifteen words. Instead of “baby monitor,” someone might ask, “what baby monitor works best for twins sharing a nursery on different sides of the room.” Instead of “convertible car seat,” it becomes “which convertible car seat is easiest to install without a base for grandparents’ car.”

That specificity is a gift, not a hurdle. Once you can see exactly what real parents are asking, you can hold that language up against your existing product descriptions, buying guides, and category pages. Where there’s a gap, that’s your content roadmap. Expand the page, answer the actual question in the actual words your customer used, and you become more relevant and more citable for that query and for every similar one after it. This is worth revisiting every four to six weeks, which is the cadence we run for our own ecommerce clients.

The Bot Activity Report is more straightforward. It breaks down what share of your traffic is coming from each individual AI platform, ChatGPT versus Gemini versus Copilot, so you know which ones are actually sending you buyers.

The third report, Topic Insights, is still in beta, but it might be the single most useful of the three for a content team. It analyzes your grounding query data and hands you a set of content topics your brand should be writing about, typically organized into a handful of clear themes based on what parents are actually asking about your category.

You can absolutely feed those topics into an AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT to build a first-draft outline. Just don’t let the AI write the finished piece. That path leads to thin, generic content that shows up duplicated across a dozen other sites saying the exact same thing. Instead, hand the AI your topic and the specific grounding queries tied to it, ask for a structured outline, and then have your team or agency turn that outline into something genuinely useful, written in your brand’s voice, backed by your actual product expertise.

Make It a Monthly Discipline, Not a One-Time Project

Installing these tools is step one. The ecommerce brands that actually win in AI search are the ones that treat this as an ongoing habit rather than a checklist item they complete once and forget. Every month, pull your grounding queries, compare them to your existing content, and close the gaps you find. Small, consistent refinements compound fast in a channel that’s still this early.

If you haven’t installed Microsoft Clarity yet, that’s the first move to make today. It’s free, takes about three minutes, and works whether your store runs on Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, or a custom build.

Get it running, start pulling data, and build the habit of checking it regularly. Over time you’ll build a broader footprint across AI platforms, more brand awareness among the parents who are already shopping your category, and a growing stream of traffic that arrives already trusting your brand because an AI platform vouched for you first.

Ready to Find Your Gaps?

If you want a clear picture of exactly where your brand stands and what to fix first, we’ll run a full AEO and GEO audit and build you a custom roadmap. Reach out and let’s get your products showing up where your customers are already asking questions.

Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of ecommerce traffic is actually coming from AI search right now?

Most brands we work with see between seven and nine percent of total website traffic coming from AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot, and that share is growing every quarter.

What exactly is a grounding query?

It’s the actual phrase a person typed into an AI platform that caused it to pull content from your website. These tend to be longer and more conversational than typical Google search terms.

Should I let an AI tool write my product content or blog posts for me?

No. AI tools are great for turning grounding query data into a solid content outline, but letting them write the finished piece usually produces generic content that ends up duplicated across the internet.

How often should I be reviewing this data?

Every four to six weeks is a good cadence for reviewing grounding queries and refining content based on what you find.

Is Microsoft Clarity difficult to set up?

Not at all. It’s free, takes about three minutes to install, and works on Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, or a custom-built store.