If you are among the DTC brands planning growth in Japan and Korea, the points below on GEO and AI search should save you a few weeks of trial and error.
Build a prompt set before you change anything
Write 25 to 40 prompts a buyer in Japan and Korea might ask: category questions, comparisons, 'best tool for' questions and pricing questions. Run them in the main assistants every month and record three things: is the brand mentioned, is it recommended, and is your page cited as a source. This baseline turns GEO from opinion into a measurable project.
Pages that earn citations
Assistants cite pages that answer one question well. Create focused pages for pricing logic, integrations, comparisons, implementation steps and FAQs. Put the direct answer in the first two sentences, then supporting detail, dates and sources. Related reading: ChatGPT query fan-out explained.
What AI assistants need from your site
Generative search tools build answers from pages they can read and trust. For DTC brands, that means a clear statement of what you do, who you serve, where you operate and how pricing works, written in plain sentences that can be quoted. If those facts only appear in images, PDFs or scattered blog posts, assistants guess, and guesses rarely favour you.
Technical hygiene
Check robots.txt and your CDN settings so AI crawlers you want are not blocked by accident. Publish an up-to-date sitemap, use descriptive titles, and add structured data only where the content is visible. Keep language versions linked with hreflang so the right market version is quoted.
Mistakes to avoid
- Writing for keywords only and never stating plain facts.
- Publishing dozens of thin pages instead of a few complete ones.
- Blocking AI crawlers by default without a decision.
- Measuring a single prompt and calling it a trend.
- Forgetting to update pages when pricing or products change.
A 90-day pilot
Month one: facts page, prompt baseline, technical fixes. Month two: five to eight answer pages and directory clean-up. Month three: re-run the prompt set, compare, and decide which topics to expand. A pilot keeps the budget small and the learning concrete.
How to report progress
Report monthly on share of mention across the prompt set, number of prompts where you are recommended, number of cited URLs from your domain, and leads that mention AI search as the source. Tag those leads in your CRM so the work can be tied to revenue rather than screenshots.
Next step
Pick two items from this list, assign an owner and a date, and review results at the end of the month.
Written by the PandaWM team in Hong Kong. PandaWM helps overseas-facing companies with GEO / AI search visibility, ad account opening and management on Facebook, Google, TikTok and about 20 smaller networks, multilingual websites, AiChatSale and a crypto payment gateway that serves overseas merchants only.