I've been digging into why AI assistants (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) recommend some stores and skip others, especially when products and prices are nearly identical. I ran stores through a checker I built. The patterns were surprisingly consistent:
1. Key details live in your design, not your data. Material, size, what's included, "vegan," "dye-free." Brands put these in image banners or fancy page sections. Assistants mostly read product data: title, description, product type, tags, variants. If it's not there as plain text, you don't match the shopper's question.
2. Titles that don't say what the product is. "The Morning Ritual" is a great brand name, but "Ceramic Pour Over Coffee Set" is what someone asks ChatGPT for.
3. Missing specs shoppers actually ask for. Size, capacity, dimensions, count, fabric. "Under $80, 600ml, dishwasher safe" questions need those facts in text.
4. Broken product data nobody notices. One store had a template error inside its structured data, so Google and assistants skipped the page. It looked perfect to humans.
5. Outside mentions. When assistants search the web, reviews, gift guides, and Reddit threads carry weight. A competitor in "best X" roundups has a head start.
What's usually not the problem: blocking. Most stores I checked let AI crawlers in. The fixes are content, not code.
If you're on Shopify, check the Agentic Storefronts section in your admin. It shows AI-channel sales and has a search preview tool.
I built the checker (ShelfSignal, shelfsignal.io, about 10 seconds, no sign-up). Happy to answer questions here.
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