Legacy skin-care brands are restructuring PDPs to stay visible in GEO AI search

Borghese, a more than 70-year-old Italian skin-care brand known for its Fango mud treatments, and RoC, a U.S.-based mass-market clinical brand with deep ties to dermatologist recommendations, are approaching the shift from different angles. Both, however, are rebuilding content and product data to ensure accuracy, authority and visibility on AI search platforms.

For RoC, the urgency is backed by consumer behavior. “We see that over 40% of consumers are now discovering new products through Gen AI search,” Hutcheson said.

Overall, RoC is concentrating its AI strategy around three areas: generative search visibility, content optimization and community engagement.

On the content side, RoC is using AI tools to test and refine product detail pages. “We’re leveraging partners that help us A/B test everything from PDP images to media performance,” Hutcheson said.

At Borghese, the catalyst for change came when the brand struggled to surface its hero product, the Fango mud treatment, in AI search results. “It took us 14 times to find it on search, on AI,” Hilarczyk said. “That’s a big problem when you want to have your No. 1 SKU accessible to everyone.”

That insight led to Project PDP, an internal initiative launched this year aimed at rebuilding how Borghese products are structured, described and distributed online. “It’s a full company initiative,” Hilarczyk said. “We’re scrubbing all of our formulas to get really factual information, pulling out scientific information, redoing our copy and redesigning our pages. We’re doing long-form [content].”

The strategy extends beyond owned channels. Borghese recently approved copy for a dedicated Wikipedia page for Fango, part of a broader effort to seed verified information across platforms that inform generative models. “AI is only as good as the information you pull from it,” Hilarczyk said. “If we’re not present in that conversation, then we’re allowing the tool to actually take over for us.”

RoC has taken a similarly pragmatic approach, using AI simulation tools from the AI search optimization platform Profound to identify which sources most influence generative search rankings, then improving them. “PDP pages on retailers’ dot-com is a big source of Gen AI search traffic,” Hutcheson said. “Another one that was surprising to me was old school print magazines that have now gone digital, like Vogue and Allure.”

That finding has pushed RoC to double down on earned media rather than paid placements. “We’re approaching it from an earned standpoint,” Hutcheson said, adding that the brand has built more than 400 Q&A sets directly into product detail pages to better match how consumers ask questions in AI search environments.

Both executives stressed that AI adoption also requires internal guardrails. “We need to talk about being AI skeptics and teach our teams to also be skeptics,” Hilarczyk said. “Where does ChatGPT scrub from? Where does Gemini scrub from?” They said there’s a need for regulatory review, human oversight of AI-generated content and clear KPI requirements to ensure tools improve efficiency rather than add complexity.

That scrutiny has also helped Borghese avoid unnecessary product development. After using AI to analyze existing formulations, the brand realized it already had buzzy longevity benefits embedded in its products. “We actually found out that our formulas had great benefits that helped increase longevity in the skin,” Hilarczyk said. “We just weren’t telling the story.”

For RoC, AI initiatives are closely tied to performance metrics. “Everything that we do around AI needs to drive team efficiency and serve the consumer,” Hutcheson said. “It should be helping the team, not overwhelming them.”