By Steve Merrill, Founder of WRKNG Digital | August 28, 2026
AI recommends products it can read. Your feed is where it reads them. Fill these fields with real detail and you become matchable. Leave them blank and you disappear.
These are the nine fields I check first on every store.
1. Title
Your title is the first thing AI reads, so make it specific. Include product type, key material, and who it's for. "Men's Waterproof Insulated Winter Jacket" beats "Blue Jacket" on every match.
2. Description
The description is where attribute density lives. Write real detail about materials, features, fit, and use case, not two generic sentences. Every specific fact is another shopper question you can answer.
3. Product type and category
Accurate category data tells AI where your product belongs. Miscategorized or blank product types make you show up for the wrong queries or none. Follow a standard taxonomy so the match is clean.
4. Brand
Brand is a trust and matching signal. AI uses it to group and verify products. Leaving it blank makes your item harder to place and easier to skip, so fill it consistently across every product.
5. Price
Price has to be present, current, and clear. Shoppers filter by budget, and AI can't satisfy a price constraint it can't read. Missing or stale prices drop you out of budget-based recommendations.
6. Availability
Availability tells AI whether to recommend you at all. An out-of-stock item marked available breaks trust when an agent tries to buy. Keep this accurate in real time.
7. Material
Material answers a huge share of buyer questions, from allergies to durability to sustainability. Most stores leave it blank. Fill it and you win the specific queries competitors can't match.
8. Gender and age group
These fields narrow the match to the right shopper. "A jacket for a teenage girl" needs gender and age group to resolve. Blank fields mean you can't satisfy those constraints, so you lose the recommendation.
9. Color and size variants
Fill color and size on every variant, not just the parent product. AI matches on the exact variant a shopper wants. Complete variant data is the difference between showing the right option and showing nothing.
Further reading
Frequently Asked Questions
Which feed field matters most?
The description and attribute fields together. Specific descriptions plus filled attributes like material, gender, and age group let AI match your product to the widest range of shopper questions.
Where do these fields live?
In your product feed and Shopify product data. Many map directly to Google's Merchant product data specification, which is a useful field-by-field checklist.
Do I need to fill every variant?
Yes for color and size. AI and agents match on the exact variant a shopper wants, so variant-level data is what surfaces the right option.
How much detail is enough?
Enough to answer the questions a good salesperson would. If a shopper would reasonably ask about it, the field should contain it in specific terms.
Want to know if AI assistants can actually find and recommend your store? Get a free AI-visibility read on your Shopify store at WRKNG Digital. We show you exactly what ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI see when they look at your products.
