By Steve Merrill, Founder of WRKNG Digital | June 17, 2026
The 10 questions below will tell you fast whether an agency has real AI commerce experience or just updated their deck. Most agencies claiming "AI SEO" expertise can't answer more than three of them, and that gap is exactly what you're paying for.
1. Can You Show Us AI Readiness Scores From Stores You've Worked On, Before and After?
Any agency with real AI commerce experience has this data on hand. If they can't show documented before-and-after scores from actual Shopify stores, they're selling you theory. Numbers or nothing.
2. Which AI Shopping Platforms Are You Actively Building For Right Now?
The answer should include ChatGPT Shopping, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity at minimum. If they lead with "Google SEO" and tack on AI as a side note, that tells you where their actual work sits.
3. How Do You Approach Product Schema and Structured Data for AI Crawlers?
Schema.org Product markup, offer pricing, availability, GTIN, condition, is what AI shopping assistants pull when deciding what to surface. An agency that can't walk you through their structured data process step by step hasn't done real AI commerce work. Push them on specifics: which fields, in what priority, and why.
4. What Does Your Product Feed Audit Actually Cover?
A real audit checks title structure, attribute completeness, GTIN accuracy, and image quality across every SKU, not just a handful of flagged items. We ran 2,400 products through our AI audit tool and found that only 11% had the data structure AI shopping assistants need to confidently recommend them. That number surprises most store owners because the gaps are invisible until you actually look.
5. How Do You Separate AI-Driven Traffic From Organic in Your Reporting?
This is a straightforward attribution question, and most agencies fail it. If they're not tracking AI referral traffic separately, from Perplexity, ChatGPT, Copilot, they can't tell you whether what they're doing is actually moving anything. You're flying blind on their behalf.
6. Have You Worked With Shopify's Agentic Commerce Features?
Shopify is building toward full agentic checkout, AI agents that browse, select, and complete purchases on behalf of users. An agency that hasn't touched Shopify's AI toolkit or worked through their commerce AI documentation isn't ready for where this is heading in the next 12 months.
7. What's Your Process When an AI Platform Changes How It Surfaces Products?
This happens constantly, Google's AI Overviews update, ChatGPT Shopping shifts ranking signals, Perplexity changes how it pulls product data. The right answer includes a real monitoring process and a documented adjustment workflow. "We'll let you know when we see something" isn't a process.
8. Can You Name the Specific AI Shopping Features You're Targeting Right Now?
Google Merchant Center AI, ChatGPT Shopping, and Microsoft Copilot Shopping are distinct systems with different data requirements and different crawl behaviors. Vague answers here mean they're guessing. Push them to be specific about what they're doing and why it matters for your catalog specifically.
9. How Do You focus on a Large SKU Catalog for AI Visibility?
High-margin, high-search-intent products come first, then you work outward from there. Any agency without a documented focus framework is going to burn your budget on low-impact SKUs while your best products stay invisible to AI shoppers. Ask to see the framework, not just hear about it.
10. What Does Success Look Like at 90 Days, and How Do You Measure It?
AI commerce visibility is measurable: AI mention rates, citation frequency from AI platforms, referral traffic from Perplexity and ChatGPT. If their 90-day answer is built around vague "brand awareness" metrics, they don't have a real measurement system yet. Real results have real numbers attached.
How We Chose This List
These questions came directly from agency vetting conversations, ones where the wrong answer cost Shopify stores six months and real money. They're designed to separate agencies doing actual AI commerce work from ones who added "AI" to their service page last quarter and haven't changed anything since.
FAQ
Q: What's the difference between AEO and regular SEO for Shopify stores?
SEO is about ranking in search results based on algorithmic signals. AEO, Answer Engine improvement, is about getting your products surfaced inside AI shopping recommendations. The signals, the data requirements, and how you measure success are all different from traditional SEO.
Q: How do I know if an agency actually has real AI commerce experience?
Ask for documented results: AI readiness scores with before-and-after comparisons, product feed audit findings from actual stores, and measurable AI referral traffic data. Real experience produces real evidence. If they can't show it, they don't have it.
Q: Should I work with a Shopify-specific agency or a general AI marketing agency?
Go Shopify-specific. Shopify's product feed architecture, metafield structure, and AI commerce tooling are distinct from other platforms. A generalist agency may understand AI theory but hasn't worked inside the actual data layers of a live Shopify store where the real gaps live.
Q: What's a realistic timeline to see measurable AI commerce results?
Structured data corrections and feed fixes typically show up in AI systems within 30 to 60 days as AI crawlers re-index your store. Measurable referral traffic from AI platforms usually appears within 60 to 90 days, depending on catalog size and how competitive your product category is inside AI shopping results.
Want to see exactly what AI shopping assistants think of your Shopify store right now? Get a free AI commerce audit at wrkngdigital.com/agentic-commerce-landing-page.
