How to get your products recommended by ChatGPT

Your products might already be in ChatGPT. Plenty of owners don't know that, because it happens through a setting that's on by default.

Here's what's actually going on. Shopify sends product data from eligible stores to AI assistants, including ChatGPT, through something called Shopify Catalog. It's switched on by default. When a shopper asks ChatGPT for a recommendation, it may suggest products that fit, and the shopper buys on your own checkout.

Nobody can promise you a recommendation. What you can control is whether you're in, and how clear your product information is when an AI reads it. That's what this article covers, in three steps.

1. Check whether you're already in

Shopify calls this feature agentic storefronts. Its help centre says it "is active by default for eligible stores". You'll find it under Sales channels → Agentic in your admin.

That page tells you most of what you need:

• Catalog status. If your store is eligible, it shows how many of your products are in Shopify Catalog. If it isn't, you'll see an "Ineligible" warning. Click it to see why.
• Which channels you're on. "Allow Shopify to manage for me" is on by default, which means every AI channel is active and new ones are added automatically. Turn it off if you want to choose channels one by one. Besides ChatGPT, the list includes Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and Gemini, and Meta.
• Search queries. A preview lets you type a search, or pick from "Top search queries" and "Queries where your products appeared", to see how your products might rank. Shopify notes that AI channels may re-rank results their own way, so treat it as a guide.
• Performance. Sales, orders, sessions and conversion from each AI channel. Orders from these channels show where they came from, so you can see whether any of this is making you money.

What ChatGPT needs from you

Shopify's help centre lists a few extra requirements for ChatGPT specifically:

• You must sell to customers in the United States. Your business can be based anywhere, but if you don't ship to the US, ChatGPT won't be an option.
• Your policies must be filled in. Terms of service, privacy policy, and return and refund policy, all under Settings → Policies.
• No B2B-only products.

There are no ChatGPT-specific fees, just your normal payment processing. And checkout happens on your own store, opened inside ChatGPT or in a new tab. Your branding, payment methods and checkout settings all still apply.

If you'd rather not be there

You can switch off Shopify Catalog access for ChatGPT on the same page. Shopify says it can take up to 7 days for sharing to stop, and that products already crawled from the open web may still appear. Blocking crawlers in robots.txt doesn't stop Shopify Catalog from sharing your data.

2. Fix your product data

An AI assistant can't look at your photos and get a feel for your brand the way a person does. It reads your product data. Shopify Catalog sends each product's title, description, options, images, price and availability by default, and keeps prices and stock up to date.

So the quality of what you've written is the quality of what the AI knows. Three things to look at.

Titles that say what the product is

"The Harbour" might be a lovely product name. To an AI, it says nothing. Put the name and the thing together: "The Harbour linen overshirt" or "Harbour 32 oz insulated water bottle". Shoppers ask AI assistants for things in plain words, so your title should use them.

Descriptions that answer questions

People ask ChatGPT questions, not keywords. "What's a good waterproof jacket for hiking in the Pacific Northwest that isn't too heavy?" Your description should answer the questions behind that: what it's made of, what it weighs, what it's for, how it fits, how to care for it.

Write these in plain sentences. A description that's all mood and no facts won't help an AI, and it doesn't help human shoppers much either. The facts an AI needs are the same ones a person looks for before they add to cart.

One specific point from Shopify: if your products need legal disclosures, put them within the first 6,000 characters of the description.

Details stored in metafields

Many stores keep key information in metafields, the custom fields that power things like size charts, material lists or ingredient panels. If titles, descriptions or categories live there, Shopify offers Shopify Catalog Mapping, which tells Catalog where to find them. You can also group variants so a product shows as one listing rather than ten.

Use Shopify's own scorecard

On the Agentic page, each product gets a Listing quality indicator. Expand it and Shopify tells you what it's looking at: description length, number of images, verified reviews, whether variants and options are complete, and shop policies. Products that didn't rank get suggestions under Improve your listing.

This is the most useful thing on the page. Start with your best sellers and work down.

3. Make your policies and reviews readable

Two of the items in that listing quality check aren't about the product at all: reviews and policies. That makes sense. Before anyone recommends a shop, person or AI, they want to know whether it's trustworthy.

Policies

Your policies need to exist for ChatGPT, but they also need to be clear. Go to Settings → Policies and read them as a stranger would:

• Is the return window stated plainly, in days?
• Are shipping times and costs the same here as on your product pages and in your banner?
• Is there anything left over from a template that doesn't apply to your shop?

Contradictions hurt you twice. A shopper who spots one loses trust, and an AI that reads two different shipping promises has no way to know which is true. Shipping costs that change between the product page and checkout are also a big reason shoppers abandon carts, which we cover in add to cart but no sales.

Reviews

Shopify's listing quality check looks for verified reviews. If you collect reviews, make sure they're attached to products and shown as text on the product page, not only as an image or a star badge. If you don't collect them yet, start with a simple post-purchase email asking for one.

Hiding products on purpose

If there's a product you don't want AI channels to show, such as a sample or a trade-only item, Shopify's documented route is to set its status to Unlisted. Be aware that this also hides it from search engines like Google and from your own store search.

What to do next

1. Open Sales channels → Agentic and check you're eligible and how many products are in Catalog.
2. If ChatGPT matters to you, confirm you sell to the US and your three policies are filled in.
3. Rewrite titles on your best sellers so they say what the product is.
4. Make descriptions answer real questions: material, size, fit, use, care.
5. Work through Shopify's Listing quality suggestions, starting with your top products.

None of this is a trick for AI. It's the same work that makes your store clearer for the people who visit it. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on your product pages, talk to us.