ChatGPT Shopping: how your products can appear in ChatGPT

What ChatGPT Shopping is, in plain terms

When a user asks ChatGPT “which insulated water bottle for a 6-year-old” or “a 30-litre hiking backpack under €100”, ChatGPT can search the web and present products: name, image, price, merchants, a summary of strengths, with links to the pages where they can be bought. This is what is commonly called ChatGPT Shopping.

The products shown come from two possible sources. First, the web pages that OpenAI’s search crawler has read: your product pages, your categories, the reviews and comparisons that mention your products. Second, the product feeds that merchants send directly to OpenAI. The second door is still closed to most shops; the first is open to everyone, today.

It is not an ad placement: you do not pay to appear in an answer. You appear because the page is readable, accurate and relevant to the question asked.

OpenAI’s product feed: reserved for approved partners

OpenAI documents an “agentic” commerce programme for merchants. Its developer documentation states that sending product feeds into ChatGPT is currently available to approved partners, with an application form at chatgpt.com/merchants.

The principle is a structured catalogue: the feed gives ChatGPT the data it needs to index your products, understand their attributes and present accurate information. OpenAI recommends sending the full feed once a day as a file, then updates throughout the day through its API.

Should you apply? Yes, if you have a clean catalogue and a feed already set up for Google Merchant Center: most of the work is done. But do not wait for the answer to act, because most visibility in ChatGPT currently comes through your web pages.

1. 1
   Prepare a clean catalogue: a unique ID, a precise title, an original description, the price incl. VAT, availability and a sharp main image for each product.
2. 2
   Reuse your Google feed: if your products are already in Merchant Center, your feed holds most of the attributes product catalogues ask for.
3. 3
   Apply at chatgpt.com/merchants: the form is the only entry point OpenAI gives.
4. 4
   Keep the feed in sync: a wrong price or stock level in an assistant’s answer costs a sale and the customer’s trust.

Step 1: let OAI-SearchBot read your product pages

No reading, no recommendation. OpenAI says it clearly: OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in ChatGPT’s search results, and a site that blocks it is not shown in search answers.

The settings are independent: you can allow OAI-SearchBot to appear in search while refusing GPTBot, the crawler that collects content for model training. Many shops block everything as a precaution and so shut themselves out of the answers.

1. 1
   Open your robots.txt: type your-shop.com/robots.txt in the browser and look for “OAI-SearchBot”, “GPTBot” and “User-agent: *”.
2. 2
   Allow OAI-SearchBot: no “Disallow: /” line should target it, or target all crawlers.
3. 3
   Check the firewall: some hosts and anti-bot services block AI crawlers by default, regardless of robots.txt.
4. 4
   Keep product pages in HTML: price, title, description and availability must be in the page code, not loaded afterwards by a script.

Step 2: product pages an assistant can quote

An assistant summarises. It takes the clearest facts on the page and assembles them into an answer. A product page that only says “premium quality, unique design” gives it nothing to use. A page that says “double-walled stainless steel bottle, 500 ml, keeps drinks cold for 24 hours according to the manufacturer, 280 g, dishwasher safe” hands it a ready-made answer.

The text must be original. A description copied from the supplier appears word for word on dozens of shops: nothing sets yours apart, neither for Google nor for an assistant.

• A first sentence that says what the product is, who it is for and its main strength.
• Specifications with figures in a list: dimensions, weight, material, capacity, compatibility.
• The price incl. VAT, delivery costs and the real lead time, visible on the page.
• The questions your customers really ask, with their answers, at the bottom of the page.
• Real, dated customer reviews, never written by the shop.
• Product and Offer structured data that repeat exactly the visible information.

Step 3: be present where the assistant looks

For a buying question, an assistant does not read only your site. It cross-checks comparisons, reviews, buying guides and forums. A brand mentioned in several independent sources is more likely to be picked up than a shop that only talks about itself.

The work is the same as for classic SEO: category pages and buying guides that answer real questions (“how to choose”, “what size for”), products sent to reviewers who publish honest reviews, and a presence in Google Shopping that makes your prices visible everywhere.

Good news for small shops: the questions people ask assistants are long and precise. On a very targeted question, a specialised, well-documented page can be the best source available, ahead of a large general site.

Measure the visits that come from ChatGPT

Visits from ChatGPT arrive with the source chatgpt.com in Google Analytics 4. On our own selling sites, from 1 October 2026 to 19 October 2026, 13% of measured visits came from an AI assistant (chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.com), and ChatGPT accounted for 92% of them. The sample is small (351 sessions from visitors who accepted measurement), but it shows that this channel is no longer marginal.

Also test by hand, once a month: ask ChatGPT your customers’ questions, with search enabled, and note which shops and products are mentioned. Those are your real competitors in the answers.

1. 1
   Create an “AI assistants” segment in GA4: source contains chatgpt, perplexity or copilot.
2. 2
   Track this segment’s purchases: purchase event by source, compared with other channels.
3. 3
   Test 10 buying questions every month: always the same ones, to see the trend.
4. 4
   Fix the pages quoted with an error: a wrong price, stock level or specification in an answer is corrected on your page.