Updated October 2026. I first wrote this post in 2016 and have rewritten it for how people shop now, in Google and in AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
Black Friday is still one of the best weeks of the year for eCommerce sites to win sales from search. The catch is that most stores start too late. If you want your Black Friday pages ranking in Google and showing up in AI answers by Thanksgiving week, the work needs to start in October.
Black Friday 2026 Dates
- Thanksgiving: Thursday, November 26, 2026
- Black Friday: Friday, November 27, 2026
- Small Business Saturday: November 28, 2026
- Cyber Monday: Monday, November 30, 2026
What Last Year Tells Us
According to Adobe’s 2025 holiday shopping report, U.S. shoppers spent $257.8 billion online from November 1 to December 31, 2025, up 6.8% year over year. Black Friday brought in $11.8 billion and Cyber Monday $14.25 billion. Mobile made up 56.4% of online transactions.
The number that stands out to me: traffic from generative AI tools to U.S. retail sites grew 693% over the prior year. It’s still a small share of total traffic, but shoppers are clearly asking ChatGPT and other AI tools for gift ideas and deals. Your Black Friday plan needs to cover both Google and AI search.
20 Black Friday SEO & GEO Tips
GEO (generative engine optimization) just means getting your brand mentioned and cited in AI answers. Most of these tips help both.
Plan the Page
- Keep one Black Friday page live all year. Use a simple, permanent URL like yoursite.com/black-friday/ and update it each season instead of creating a new page. When I first published this post, Rebecca Lehmann (who led content and SEO at Brad’s Deals at the time) told me this was the biggest miss she saw from retailers. Stores would put up an event page, pull it down after the holidays and get outranked for their own “<brand> Black Friday” searches every year. That advice still holds.
- Keep the year out of the URL, but put it in the title. A URL without the year can keep its links and rankings year after year. A title with the year (like “Black Friday Deals 2026”) tells shoppers the page is current, and many of them search with the year.
- Publish or refresh early. Aim for late October or the first week of November. Google and AI tools need time to crawl, index and trust the page before searches spike. Waiting until Thanksgiving week is too late.
- Plan for Cyber Monday too. Either give Cyber Monday its own evergreen page or a clear section on your Black Friday page. Shoppers search both terms, and the deals often change between Friday and Monday.
Research What Shoppers Ask
- Start with last year’s data in Google Search Console. Filter the Performance report to last November and December, then filter queries containing “black friday,” “cyber monday” or “deals.” These are the exact searches that already found you, and they’re the best place to start.
- Use Google’s autocomplete and “People also ask.” Type “black friday” plus your product category and note what Google suggests. Keyword tools are often slow to pick up seasonal searches, so this fills the gaps.
- Ask the AI tools yourself. Try prompts like “What are the best Black Friday deals on [your product]?” in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode. Note which brands get named and which sites get cited. If your competitors show up and you don’t, that’s your gap to close.
- Target “best” searches and gift guides. Holiday shoppers are often unsure what to buy, so they search for “best gifts for [person]” and “best [product] for [use].” Build gift guides that answer those questions with real picks from your catalog.
- Organize gift guides by who’s buying. “Gifts for runners under $50” or “best espresso machines for beginners” match how people actually search and prompt. In my AI search citation study, a brand’s visibility in AI answers swung by as much as 80 points depending on the buyer persona asking, but only a few points based on how the question was worded.
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Make the Offer Easy to Find (and Cite)
- State the deal in plain text. Spell out the discount, the dates, the promo code, free shipping thresholds and holiday shipping cutoffs. Don’t hide the offer inside a banner image.
- Make sure your deals don’t depend on JavaScript. Most AI crawlers (like GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot) don’t run JavaScript. If your deal details only load through a script, a countdown widget or a pop-up, AI tools may never see them. Check that key text is in the page’s raw HTML.
- Update your product data. Keep prices, sale prices and availability accurate in your Product schema and your Google Merchant Center feed. Merchant Center lets you schedule sale prices ahead of time, so your discounts show up on the right dates in Google Shopping results.
- Refresh your shipping, returns and holiday policy pages. Shoppers ask about delivery dates and gift returns, and so do AI tools. In my study, FAQ and policy pages earned 12% of company-site citations in consumer eCommerce. Make them current and easy to find.
- Keep sold-out product pages live. Don’t delete or redirect a popular product page because it sold out on Black Friday. Show that it’s out of stock, suggest alternatives and keep the page indexed so it’s ready to sell again.
- Show reviews on your product pages. Ratings and reviews help shoppers decide, and they give Google and AI tools more reasons to recommend a product.
Promote It
- Link to your Black Friday page from your homepage and main navigation. During the season, this tells both shoppers and crawlers that the page matters. Pull the links back after the holidays, but keep the page live.
- Earn press and links early. Rebecca’s other tip from the original post: journalists start covering Black Friday in late October, when there’s still little news. Something newsworthy (like closing your stores on Thanksgiving) can earn links if you pitch it before the big retailers release their ads.
- Make holiday gift videos. Short gift guides and product demos on YouTube help shoppers decide and can show up in both Google results and AI answers. Embed them on your gift guide pages.
- Get your mobile checkout fast and simple. More than half of holiday purchases happen on phones. Test your checkout on a phone before November, including guest checkout and wallet payments.
- Track AI traffic separately. Set up a channel group in Google Analytics 4 for AI referrals (chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, claude.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and others). For one of my eCommerce clients, revenue per ChatGPT visit grew from $1.05 to $6.33 in a single quarter, so you’ll want to know what this traffic is worth to you.
Should You Run Paid Ads Too?
If most of your holiday revenue depends on organic search, I’d suggest setting aside a paid search and Shopping budget as a hedge. On many holiday searches, Google shows ads, Shopping results and AI Overviews above the organic listings, so even a #1 ranking can sit well down the page.
Start Now
The stores that win Black Friday in search usually did the work in October. If you want help getting your Black Friday pages ready for Google and AI tools, request a free consultation or see our eCommerce SEO and GEO services.
