How an AI assistant picks a shop

By idealbusiness.ai team · Sources checked on 30 October 2026

When someone asks an AI assistant what to buy and where, it names a few shops. Here are the four steps between your website and that answer.

First, an honest caveat. No vendor publishes its exact recipe for choosing which shops to mention. OpenAI, for example, says ChatGPT picks products based on the user's needs, such as budget, preferences and constraints, without explaining how relevance is weighted [1]. What vendors do document is the groundwork: who may visit your site, what they can read, which data formats they accept, and what they expect from a trustworthy merchant. That groundwork is what this post covers.

By AI assistants we mean tools like ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude.

1. Access: can the AI assistant reach your shop?

What it means. Most AI assistants use crawlers, automated visitors that fetch web pages. Your robots.txt file tells each crawler whether it is welcome. Many vendors run separate crawlers for search and for model training, and you can treat them differently.

Why the AI assistant cares. If its search crawler is blocked, it has little or nothing of yours to show:

What to check on your shop: open yourshop.com/robots.txt and confirm that OAI-SearchBot, Googlebot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot are not disallowed.

2. Read: can it see your content once it arrives?

What it means. Many modern shop themes build the page in the visitor's browser using JavaScript. A person sees a finished product page. A crawler that doesn't run JavaScript may see an almost empty one.

Why the AI assistant cares. It can only use what it can read. In a December 2024 study, Vercel reported that "none of the major AI crawlers currently render JavaScript", naming GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot. Gemini uses Googlebot's infrastructure and renders JavaScript fully [7]. Google confirms it can process JavaScript content "as long as it isn't blocked" [8]. The study is from 2024 and crawlers change, so treat it as a reason to check, not as a permanent rule.

Vercel's advice: put critical content, such as product name, price, availability and description, in the HTML the server sends, rather than loading it later in the browser [7].

What to check on your shop: view the page source (not the rendered page) of a product page and confirm the name, price and stock status are there as plain text.

3. Understand: can it tell exactly what you sell?

What it means. Beyond reading pages, AI assistants can use structured product data: a feed or catalog, and machine-readable markup on your pages.

Why the AI assistant cares. Structured data removes guesswork about price, currency, stock, shipping and returns. Vendors document several routes:

To be fair to Google: it says structured data "isn't required for generative AI search" and that no special markup is needed. It still recommends it for rich results [8]. Think of it as making your facts unambiguous, not as a ranking trick. Google also says that new "AI text files" such as llms.txt "will neither harm nor help" visibility in Google Search [8].

What to check on your shop: test a product page in Google's Rich Results Test and confirm Product, Offer, shipping and return details appear, then check that your Merchant Center feed matches the page.

4. Trust: does your shop look like a real, reliable merchant?

What it means. Identity and policies: who you are, how to reach you, what delivery costs, how returns work, and your terms.

Why the AI assistant cares. No AI assistant publishes a trust checklist. The closest documented standard is Google Merchant Center, whose product data Google says can feed its AI responses [8]. Its misrepresentation policy bars a false "identity, business name, or contact information". It also bars hiding "post-purchase terms, fulfillment timelines, or refund restrictions" and requires disclosure of "all applicable shipping costs, including those for returns" [13]. Google asks shops to show at least one contact method (address, phone, email, contact form or social profile). Your business name, address and phone must also match across your site and Merchant Center [14].

Ratings can be part of your product markup: aggregateRating is a recommended property in Google's merchant listing structured data [10]. We found no vendor documentation on how AI assistants weigh reviews when choosing a shop.

What to check on your shop: confirm your footer links to contact, company details, shipping, returns and terms, and that the details match your Merchant Center account.

Where AI agents come in

The same four steps matter beyond answers. AI agents that compare products and buy on a user's behalf read the same feeds, structured data and policies. OpenAI describes ACP as a foundation for "broader AI-native commerce experiences" [1]. Shopify's agentic storefronts include a knowledge base for return processes and shipping timelines so AI agents can answer customer questions, and optional checkout inside some AI channels [9]. Clean, consistent data serves both.

None of this guarantees a mention. It removes the documented reasons an AI assistant might skip you.

Not sure how to prepare, or need help adopting the latest AI practices? Get in touch: hello@idealbusiness.ai

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Sources

  1. "Powering Product Discovery in ChatGPT", OpenAI, 24 March 2026. https://openai.com/index/powering-product-discovery-in-chatgpt/
  2. "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers", OpenAI (no date shown). https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
  3. "AI Features and Your Website", Google Search Central, last updated 10 December 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
  4. "Google's common crawlers", Google for Developers, last updated 15 October 2026. https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-common-crawlers
  5. "Perplexity Crawlers", Perplexity (no date shown). https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers
  6. "Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?", Anthropic / Claude Help Center, 7 April 2026. https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518
  7. "The rise of the AI crawler", Vercel (G. Zecchini, A. A. Moore, M. Ubl, R. Siddle), 17 December 2024. https://vercel.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-ai-crawler
  8. "Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search", Google Search Central, last updated 10 July 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide
  9. "Agentic storefronts", Shopify Help Center (no date shown). https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts
  10. "How To Add Merchant Listing Structured Data", Google Search Central (no date shown in fetched content). https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/merchant-listing
  11. "OfferShippingDetails", Schema.org. https://schema.org/OfferShippingDetails
  12. "Merchant Return Policy Structured Data (MerchantReturnPolicy)", Google Search Central, last updated 8 September 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/return-policy
  13. "Misrepresentation", Google Merchant Center Help. https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6150127
  14. "How to fix: Missing contact information on your online store", Google Merchant Center Help. https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/12472091