More shoppers now start with a question instead of a search box. "What's a good candle gift for a busy parent under $50?" "Which dog harness won't rub?" ChatGPT answers with a short list of products and shops. If your store isn't on that list, that shopper never hears your name.
Start by checking whether ChatGPT can read your store and understand what you sell. Most of the checks below are things you can do in Shopify yourself. They apply whether you sell your own brand, resell stock or dropship.
How ChatGPT picks products
OpenAI explains this in its help article on shopping with ChatGPT search. When deciding what to show, ChatGPT looks at:
- Structured product data from merchants and third parties, such as price and product description
- What the model already knows before it searches
- OpenAI's safety standards and product policies
When several shops sell the same item, OpenAI says merchants are ranked on factors like availability, price, quality, and whether they are the maker or primary seller of that item. The last factor matters if you resell or dropship products that the brand also sells.
Shopify stores already have a route into ChatGPT. OpenAI says product data from Shopify merchants is already integrated into ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog, with no extra work needed. Shopify builds that catalog from your store automatically. Check what ChatGPT learns about your store from that data. Does it describe your products correctly?
1. Check you're switched on
Before anything else, open your Shopify admin and go to Sales channels > Agentic. Shopify's help page on selling in ChatGPT lists what you need:
- Your store must sell to customers in the United States (you can be based anywhere)
- Your products must be eligible for Shopify Catalog
- You must accept the Agentic Storefronts supplemental terms
- Your Terms of service, Privacy policy and Return and refund policy must be filled in under Settings > Policies
Shopify's ChatGPT shopping guide adds that your storefront can't be password protected, and every product needs a title and at least one image. If you see an "Ineligible" warning in the Agentic section, resolve it before working on the rest of your Catalog setup.
Since 10 November 2026 you can also claim your store's profile in ChatGPT through Business Hub. It lets you correct your details and see mentions, but OpenAI says it doesn't guarantee more visibility.
2. Don't lock the door on ChatGPT's search crawler
Besides Shopify Catalog, ChatGPT search reads public web pages. OpenAI's crawler documentation says sites that block OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. It's separate from GPTBot, which is about training, so you can block training and still allow search.
Shopify's default robots.txt allows access. If yours blocks the crawler, check:
- A custom
robots.txt.liquidfile someone added years ago - An app that "protects" your content from bots
- Bot settings at your domain provider, if your domain runs through a service like Cloudflare
To check, visit yourstore.com/robots.txt and look for a section naming OAI-SearchBot with Disallow: /. If you see one, remove it. OpenAI notes changes can take about 24 hours to be picked up.
3. Say who you're for, in your own words, on the homepage
AI reads your homepage, About page and product pages to work out what you sell and who it's for. If your hero says "Elevate your everyday" over a lifestyle photo, AI has to guess. It might guess right. Often it files you under something broad, like "home fragrance shop" or "general gift store", and then recommends you for the wrong questions or not at all.
Write one plain sentence near the top of your homepage that covers three things:
- What you sell, using the words a shopper would type ("soy candles", not "sensory rituals")
- Who it's for ("for busy parents", "for new dog owners", "for runners with wide feet")
- What makes it different, using a specific fact ("hand-poured in small batches", "ships from Melbourne in 2 days")
Then make your homepage meta title and your About page say the same thing. Consistent wording gives AI fewer conflicting descriptions to work with. Check that the description it gives matches what you meant.
4. Write product pages that answer the shopper's question
Think about the question someone asked ChatGPT just before it found you. "Gentle face wash for sensitive skin under $30." "Gift for a new dad who likes coffee." Your product page has to answer that question plainly, or AI has nothing to match.
Shopify's own guide to optimising your store for AI recommends detailed specifications, comparison information, sizing guides, materials and care instructions. In practice, a strong product description opens with who it's for and what it's for, then covers:
- What it is, in plain words, plus size, materials, ingredients or specs
- Who it suits, and who it doesn't
- The occasion or problem it solves (gift, travel, sensitive skin, small spaces)
- What's in the box, how long shipping takes, and how returns work
Swap vague phrases like "premium quality" or "luxurious feel" for facts AI can repeat. "100% soy wax, cotton wick, about 45 hours of burn time" gives it something to work with. "Indulgent and elevated" doesn't.
Shopify's Catalog optimisation guide also lists the fields it passes to AI platforms: title, description, images, product type, vendor, collections, tags, barcode (GTIN, UPC, ISBN) and variant option names. Fill in product type and collections properly, add barcodes where your products have them, and name your options clearly ("Size", "Scent"), not "Option 1".
5. If you resell or dropship, give AI a reason to pick you
Remember OpenAI's ranking factors: availability, price, quality, and whether you're the maker or primary seller. If you sell the exact same product as 40 other shops, ChatGPT may well send the click to the brand itself or to the cheapest listing it knows about. OpenAI says it often highlights the lowest price it's aware of, sometimes with a "Best price" label.
Give shoppers a reason to choose your store over another seller:
- Bundle products into sets that only you sell, like a "first week with a new puppy" kit
- Focus on a niche. "Ergonomic office gear for people with wrist pain" is easier to recommend than "office products"
- Explain why someone should buy from you, such as faster local shipping, easier returns, a guarantee you honour or expert advice. Put that information on the product page
- Write your own descriptions. Copying the supplier's text makes you look identical to every other seller
6. Fill in your policies and Shopify's knowledge base
When a shopper asks ChatGPT "does this shop ship to Canada?" or "can I return it?", the AI needs an answer. Shopify's free knowledge base, under Sales channels > Agentic > Knowledge base in your admin, lets you review and publish the facts AI agents use to answer questions about your store. Shopify drafts some of them from your storefront, and they stay unpublished until you publish them.
Spend 30 minutes here. Add clear answers on shipping times, returns, gift wrapping, ingredients or materials, and who your products are for. These are the questions that decide whether a shopper clicks through or picks someone else.
7. Earn mentions outside your own store
AI doesn't only read your site. It also reads reviews, articles, gift guides and forum threads. A store that only talks about itself is harder to trust than one that others talk about too.
Focus on the honest, slow-building kind:
- Ask happy customers for reviews, and make sure they show on your product pages
- Pitch your products to gift guides, local press and niche blogs in your category
- Show up helpfully in communities where your customers already hang out
Skip anything fake. Google's guide to generative AI search says plainly that seeking inauthentic mentions isn't as helpful as it might seem, and manufactured Reddit posts tend to get found out.
What not to waste money on
- Paying for an llms.txt file won't fix unclear positioning. Google says it ignores these files for Search, including its AI features. Shopify stores already reach ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog.
- Avoid services promising guaranteed AI rankings. No one outside these companies controls their answers. Google's guide warns that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking systems.
- Don't publish hundreds of near-identical pages to target every version of a question. Google calls that scaled content abuse.
Check what ChatGPT says, more than once
AI answers change from one run to the next. Ask ChatGPT once and you might appear, ask again and you might not. And if you ask with your store name in the question, you only learn that ChatGPT can look up a name. That's not the same as being recommended.
A fair test uses the questions a stranger would ask, without your brand name, asked several times. Then look at three things: does AI mention you, how does it describe you, and who does it recommend instead? The other stores named in those answers are worth comparing with yours.
Fix the basics above, give it a few weeks, then repeat the same unbranded questions. Save the answers so you can compare which stores appear and whether ChatGPT describes yours correctly.