How to Optimize Your E-commerce Store for AI Search

Now that shopping features are integrated into AI search, customers can now compare options, check pricing, and read reviews while chatting.

AI search opens a powerful new channel for product discovery that can directly drive sales. It’s an opportunity you can’t afford to miss.

Let’s break down the steps you can take to maximize your store visibility in AI search.

Overview of Shopping Features in AI Search Engines

ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity support e-commerce features to make online shopping easier for customers.

It’s a good idea to spend some time studying how these AI platforms recommend products and stores so you can understand how you can win visibility.

Google AI Mode e-commerce and Product Recommendations

Google AI Mode is currently US-only but is likely expanding soon.

AI Mode recommends products when you ask a question with possible buying intent.

There are two components to Google’s AI Mode responses for product-related queries:

• A text list of recommended products, along with clickable carousels
• Articles covering product reviews and buying guides

Once you click a product, either from the carousel or a linked recommendation, AI Mode will open a side widget showing the product’s details.

This is where you’ll find a list of stores to buy the selected product from, along with the price each store is selling it for.

If you click on a store, it will direct you to the product page. You can add your items to the cart and check out as usual from the store website.

For clothing items and accessories, the AI Mode product widget lets you use AI-generated try-on models.

I like the price tracking feature too, which enables emails and push notifications for alerts about price changes.

Users can also see user reviews near the bottom of the widget.

Right now, you can’t directly purchase products from the AI Mode interface. Google will likely launch this feature soon, based on sneak peeks shown during the Google I/O.

Shopping with ChatGPT

Currently, ChatGPT is offering e-commerce features on all plans (free and paid) and across all regions where ChatGPT is available.

ChatGPT’s shopping features are similar to Google’s AI Mode. The AI model lists products that meet any specifications or criteria you pointed out in your query.

Like AI Mode, ChatGPT displays product recommendations as links and image carousels in its response.

Clicking on a product opens a list of stores offering it, with metadata like product title and ratings.

ChatGPT explains its recommendations by highlighting product features that match your criteria.

As you scroll down, you’ll find summaries of reviewers from different websites.

ChatGPT includes a mix of reviews, including authors giving their expert reviews after testing, as well as the thoughts of average customers.

It also labels the sentiment of a review to highlight if it speaks positively or negatively about the product.

While Google AI Mode pulls full user reviews as-is from a merchant’s website, ChatGPT gives you an AI-generated summary of reviews from each site to highlight the bits that are important to you.

Finally, ChatGPT is partnering up with Shopify, which will enable features like direct checkouts from the ChatGPT interface.

Even though ChatGPT’s product recommendation features are supposed to work on all plans, the free version didn’t display the sidebar with product metadata, store options, and review summaries in my testing.

However, our editor, Claire, was able to get products to show up on the paid version.

Shopping with Perplexity Pro

At this time, Perplexity’s shopping features are only available in the Pro version and within the US.

Perplexity’s product listings differ from both ChatGPT and AI Mode.

Each product gets a description, an aggregate rating, and a product title, along with a card highlighting the pros and cons of each product.

This gives you a more comprehensive summary in the main chat interface than AI Mode and ChatGPT’s carousels.

It’s also worth noting that each product listing in Perplexity Pro is linked with a specific merchant.

So, unlike ChatGPT, you can’t explore different sellers for the same product or compare pricing between them.

The expanded view reveals a bunch of helpful info, including additional pros and cons and a summary of user reviews.

At times, I’ve seen short YouTube video reviews appearing in the “What People Say” section as well.

When you’re ready to buy, Perplexity Pro will either take you to the store it recommends you buy the product from or let you check out directly from the chat interface.

In fact, Perplexity Pro also offers customers the very appealing benefit of removing shipping costs for purchases made directly through the “Buy with Pro” option.

I like Perplexity Pro’s unique shopping features and its formatting that helps customers see key features of a product at a glance.

It helps to spend some time exploring different AI search engines and studying their responses.

A Word on Product vs Store Optimization

AI Mode in Google and ChatGPT are both product-first chatbots.

That means the primary aim of these platforms is to recommend products that best meet the customer’s requirements.

The merchants selling these products are only displayed later, once the user clicks on an item of interest.

For that reason, promoting your product for AI discovery requires a different strategy than promoting your store as the seller.

Your strategy will ultimately depend on the nature of your e-commerce business.

If you run a marketplace selling all kinds of third-party brands, you only need to be concerned about appearing in AI chats with links to buy from your site.

But if you also make original products that you sell from your own site as well as from third-party stores, you need to optimize your products for AI recommendations as well as your store, as separate entities.

1. Review AI Crawlability Settings

AI search results can only surface your products and website if you allow open access to the appropriate crawlers.

Make sure you aren’t blocking any of these crawlers in your robots.txt file:

• Googlebot
• OAI-SearchBot
• ChatGPT-User
• PerplexityBot
• Perplexity‑User
• Bingbot

Configuring llms.txt

In addition to table-stakes steps like configuring your robots.txt, this is also a good time to add a new llms.txt file.

Essentially, llms.txt is a structured markdown document that contains links to help guide AI crawlers to your most important content.

So far, views on llms.txt are mixed.

For example, John Mueller stated in June 2025 that no LLM is using it:

FWIW no AI system currently uses llms.txt.

— John Mueller (@johnmu.com) June 17, 2025 at 2:10 PM

But according to Profound, models from Microsoft, OpenAI, and others are actively crawling and indexing llms.txt and llms-full.txt already.

As with many things in AI search, things change quickly. You may want to get ahead and create one now anyway. It could give your e-commerce store an advantage.

Your llms.txt file can be as simple as a small, organized list of key links on your site that you want to prioritize for AI discovery.

As a shopping store, you can assist LLM discovery of your key content by including links to your return policy, product category pages, FAQs, and so on in the llms.txt file.

You can create your llms.txt file in markdown format manually and then upload it to your domain’s root directory.

In fact, AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can save you time by generating the llms.txt for you.

Feel free to edit the AI-generated file manually to ensure it covers all the links and context you want AI crawlers to pay attention to.

If you’re on WordPress, you have even better options with plugins that both create and upload your llms.txt file to the root directory:

• Yoast SEO
• Website LLMs.txt
• Hostinger Tools

The Semrush Site Audit tool also now alerts you if it finds your website is lacking an llms.txt file.

2. Add Product Metadata and Schema Implementation

AI tools favor digestible content.

The easier you can make it for AI to pull key information about your product, the more they’re likely to consider linking to you.

For e-commerce stores, this means enriching your product listings with attributes and metadata that aid AI understanding of what you’re offering.

For each product, make sure to add unique and clear attributes like:

• Product title
• Price
• Size or dimensions
• Color
• Return or exchange policy

List this metadata in appropriate fields in your product page rather than dumping it all into a descriptive paragraph where it might be ignored by AI.

At the same time, you should also implement prominent schema markup types that make your product listing more machine-readable.

Some schema types you should consider adding:

• Product
• Offer
• AggregateRating
• Review
• MerchantReturnPolicy
• shippingDetails

Adding schema to WordPress is really easy if you’re using WooCommerce along with SEO plugins like Yoast or Rank Math.

It’s a little trickier with e-commerce platforms like Shopify, which only use a few basic schema types by default. You’ll need to edit your Shopify theme code to create additional schema properties.

Once implemented, make sure to use the Google Rich Results Test tool to check your schema implementation and identify any issues.

Google Search Console also reports schema errors, so make sure to keep an eye on it.

3. Serve Hyper-focused Intents

An important way to stand out in AI search is by optimizing for long-tail conversational queries with specific shopping or product research intent.

ChatGPT hints at this in its documentation, referencing a scenario for the user’s needs and how it selects products to recommend:

It’s plain that ChatGPT pays attention to context and surfaces products that meet the user’s specifications. These criteria can take any shape: budget, attributes, value judgments, allergies, and so on.

Highlight specific pain points, problems, and use cases that your product is designed to solve

This is how you help AI match your product to your ideal customers seeking products with highly specific qualities.

Another excerpt from a ChatGPT documentation hints at how the AI model attaches feature labels to products based on descriptions found about them:

It confirms the notion that positioning your product to meet user intent for different audience personas is an impactful way to maximize your AI search visibility.

But you can only create tailored content if you know what kind of conversations your audience is having with AI platforms.

The Audience & Content part of the Semrush AI Toolkit covers this gap perfectly.

You’ll find a super actionable chart representing different intents that the relevant audience is trying to solve in AI chats.

A high percentage of research questions means you should be producing more content on product research topics that the AI can reference when answering questions about your brand.

You can dive even deeper and find a list of actual questions users are asking AI engines.

This is a fantastic resource for identifying high-intent questions that lead to AI mentioning your brand.

If you answer these questions in your blog and your product descriptions, you can influence how AI positions your brand in future queries.

After covering these topics on your website, start branching to other parts of the web.

Start discussions on social media on the same topics. Perform digital PR and pursue media mentions, positioning your brand and products favorably in relation to these AI-driven queries.

LLMs form an opinion about you based on a variety of sources, so you need to get people talking about you in all the places that AI is paying attention to (more on this later).

4. Produce Product Reviews and Comparison Content

AI platforms are always on the lookout for content that helps people make quick decisions and serve their intent.

Both ChatGPT and Google AI Mode include articles covering product reviews, comparisons, and product roundups in response to shopping-related queries.

Conduct a thorough content audit and then produce high-quality content focused on product reviews and comparisons to earn AI search result citations.

This is good for boosting your store’s AI visibility.

If you’re selling original products, you should also get your best products listed in third-party reviews and comparison content.

This helps your product visibility in AI search engines because they see the same information repeated elsewhere.

The more widely and favorably your product is talked about, the more likely it is to be recommended by AI tools.

5. Build Brand and Product Mentions

Brand mentions across the web increase your AI visibility.

What you say about your brand matters. But what third-party sources say about you matters even more.

AI tools take articles, user reviews, and other content referencing you as a strong signal of your popularity.

The good thing is that you can boost your mentions through partnerships and PR with other publishers.

But first, you need to have a good idea of where you stand right now as a brand.

The Semrush Brand Monitoring app is a must-have tool for tracking your brand’s web mentions.

Unlike traditional SEO’s focus on backlinks, AI tools can extract meaning even from unlinked content.

So, even unlinked brand mentions will work in your favor if there are enough sources discussing you on the web.

The Brand Monitoring app reveals both your linked and unlinked brand mentions.

It also gives you a breakdown of categories of websites that mention you.

You can use data from the Brand Monitoring app to:

• Identify the types of websites that are more likely to mention you
• Identify areas of the web where your brand presence is weak
• Reach out to relevant publishers for brand placement requests
• Launch PR campaigns to boost your mentions on underperforming but high-impact sources

6. Work on Positive Sentiments

Brand mentions are one half of the equation when AI platforms are considering mentioning you in a chat.

The sentiment surrounding your brand is the second half, and it’s equally important.

The Semrush Brand Monitoring app doesn’t just track your mentions. It also analyzes your brand sentiment.

You can filter your brand mentions by positive, negative, or neutral sentiment.

This helps you spot common issues in negative mentions so you can influence how people see your brand.

If AI platforms see enough positive sentiment around your brand, they’re also likely to recommend you strongly in relevant e-commerce queries.

But sentiment analysis based on online discussions isn’t the complete story.

You also need to track how AI platforms describe you in chats with your target audience compared to how they perceive your competitors.

This is where the Semrush AI Toolkit excels.

The Brand & Marketing section of the AI Toolkit illustrates your share of positive sentiment by different AI tools, compared to the main competitors you’re tracking.

It’s the easiest way to see if your perception in Google AI Mode is as good as in ChatGPT Search (aka SearchGPT) or Perplexity.

You can also see how your overall sentiment is distributed.

The Key Sentiment Drivers provide highly actionable insights about AI responses, discussing specific strengths and weaknesses of your brand.

These insights are highly tailored to your brand, so you can act on these suggestions to keep improving your brand sentiment.

One way to reduce negative sentiment is by focusing on the top negative driver and changing your product to address the concerns.

You’ll then only need to publicize your changes so that other sources on the web re-evaluate their opinions about you, which in turn will influence how AI perceives your brand.

7. Join Product Feeds And Merchant Products

ChatGPT hints that it considers structured metadata from third-party providers when suggesting products to users. But it doesn’t name these providers.

Considering OpenAI’s close partnership with Microsoft, there’s a good chance that Bing Shopping Feeds is one of those third-party sources.

So if you aren’t signed up to the Microsoft Merchant Center, you should do that now and create your product feeds.

Besides Bing, Shopify stores also appear in ChatGPT’s recommendations.

The same logic likely applies to how Google AI Mode selects products and stores to recommend in conversational searches with shopping intent.

So make sure you have your product feeds created in Google Merchant Center as well.

ChatGPT is also launching its own separate product feeds. You can sign up to be notified as soon as the feature becomes available.

Once it’s up and running, ChatGPT product feeds will likely have a strong influence over which products and stores appear in AI recommendations.

Like ChatGPT, Perplexity also has a partnership with Shopfiy. So it can recommend products from Shopify.

Perplexity also has its own merchant program that’s already live for sellers in the US.

You can sign up for the Perplexity merchant program here.

When your store is approved, Perplexity will let you create product feeds that it can use to serve products from your store directly.

Since Perplexity offers tangible perks like free shipping to Pro customers, it’s a valuable platform that can put your products in front of high-intent shoppers.

8. Gather User Generated Content and Reviews

Reviews and ratings take a prominent place in AI responses linking your brand or product.

Whether it’s the product listing carousels in AI Mode:

Or ChatGPT’s e-commerce recommendations:

If your product has poor ratings, your chances of getting featured by AI are close to zero. The same is true if you’re not actively collecting and displaying your positive reviews.

It’s important to have strong reviews for your brand across the web, rather than concentrating on your site alone.

The impact of high ratings from multiple independent sources is orders of magnitude greater than that of a single source.

That’s why I recommend simplifying review submissions on your store. Using appropriate schema markup for your ratings will also help AI platforms see this information easily.

In addition, you should encourage reviews in your order confirmation and other transactional emails. Sometimes, all it takes is a gentle reminder to get happy customers to leave you a great review.

9. Improve Social Media Presence

Social media conversations hold a lot of influence over AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity.

It’s a good idea to actively engage in social media and get more people to talk about your brand and products.

AI crawlers can see this engagement, which can help you get featured more in shopping-related chats.

Reddit and Quora are two of the most visible places that AI tools visit for user-generated content. It’s worthwhile to include these platforms in your marketing strategy for AI search.

Semrush research revealed the most cited domains in AI Overviews:

So it’s reasonable to believe that AI Mode is citing those sources too. They already rank well in organic results.

You can participate in Reddit communities and Quora to spark discussions that naturally lead to more mentions and positive sentiment.

Take care to follow each subreddit’s rules and avoid the temptation to spam.

10. Enrich Your Web Presence With Multimodal Content

If your store only uses text, you’re missing visibility in AI search. AI responses are becoming more multimodal and include rich media like images and video along with textual content.

Clearly, multimodal search is extremely pertinent for highly visual industries like e-commerce, as Google also emphasized in its recent I/O event.

Here are a few steps you can take to make your store multimodal-ready:

Use High-Quality Product Images

AI tools like Google AI Mode and ChatGPT use product visuals to validate and recommend listings.

Make sure to include multiple images from different angles, covering different use cases (where appropriate). It’s also good practice to use clear, descriptive alt text for easy AI parsing.

Add Short-Form Product Videos

Videos increase your product’s chances of being cited in AI answers in Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and ChatGPT.

You can showcase your product in use and upload it to YouTube as well as embed it on your product pages.

The use of captions and on-screen text can also make it easier for AI to interpret your video content.

Third-party content creators reviewing your products on YouTube can also play a strong role in enhancing your AI visibility.

Encourage Images and Videos in Reviews

User reviews don’t have to be text only.

In fact, encouraging more visual user-generated content is a smart strategy because your customers are effectively producing multimodal content in more contexts than you can create alone.

Turn AI Search Into a Conversion Source

Shopping features in AI are relatively new.

And yet, these features are already advanced enough to entice customers to adopt AI-led shopping as a more convenient alternative to traditional e-commerce.

Early adopters of AI search will have a major advantage over slower competitors.

The Semrush AI Toolkit offers you the data you need to act fast based on strategic insights tailored to your business.

It’s also a reliable way to monitor your brand visibility and sentiment on major AI models.

You can always start with the free Semrush account and test its powerful AI search features for winning product recommendations more frequently and with strong sentiments in your favor.