This audit takes 15 minutes. Run these five checks and you'll know exactly whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI can find and recommend your products — or whether your store is invisible to all three.
1. Check Your products.json Endpoint
Shopify exposes a public product catalog at yourstore.com/products.json. AI shopping crawlers can read it directly — titles, prices, variants, availability — without scraping your individual product pages. Visit that URL in your browser right now. A passing result is a JSON response with a products array loaded with your catalog data. A 403 error, a blank page, or a login redirect means AI platforms can't read your inventory at all.
This endpoint is enabled by default on every Shopify store, per Shopify's AJAX API reference. If yours is blocked, the likely culprits are storefront password protection, a headless configuration that locked down public routes, or a third-party app that restricted access without you knowing.
Actionable step: Type your store URL followed by /products.json directly into a browser. Confirm you get a valid JSON response with no login wall.
2. Test Your Product Schema Markup
Schema markup is how AI models and search engines read structured product data. The required fields are name, price, availability, image, and description , all inside a Product schema type. If those fields are missing or malformed, AI shopping surfaces won't treat your listing as complete. Run any product page through Google's Rich Results Test at search.google.com/test/rich-results.
A passing result shows valid Product markup with zero critical errors. According to Google Search Central's structured data documentation, price and availability are specifically required for products to appear in AI-powered shopping features. Most Shopify themes ship with basic Product schema. Basic and complete are not the same thing.
Actionable step: Paste your best-selling product URL into Google's Rich Results Test. Fix every field flagged as missing or with a critical error before moving on.
3. Verify OAI-SearchBot Isn't Blocked in robots.txt
OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's web crawler. It feeds product and page data into ChatGPT's shopping and browsing features. If it's blocked in your robots.txt, ChatGPT can't see your store. Visit yourstore.com/robots.txt and scan for any Disallow rule targeting OAI-SearchBot or a wildcard User-agent: * block wide enough to catch it. OpenAI documents every bot they operate , including OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User , at platform.openai.com/docs/bots.
A passing result: OAI-SearchBot has an explicit Allow: / rule, or it's not mentioned at all. No mention defaults to allowed. I've seen stores where someone added a broad bot-blocking rule years ago and forgot about it. That one line is costing them ChatGPT visibility right now.
Actionable step: Open your robots.txt. Search specifically for "OAI-SearchBot" and "GPTBot." If either is disallowed, remove the block and verify the file saves correctly.
4. Test Your llms.txt File
llms.txt is a plain-text file that tells AI systems what your site is, what it sells, and where to find its key content. Think of it as robots.txt rebuilt for large language models , except instead of controlling crawler access, it's providing context and navigation structure. Visit yourstore.com/llms.txt. A passing result: a 200 status, an H1 with your store name, a brief description, and organized sections linking out to your product categories, policies, and about page.
A 404 is a missed signal. The llms.txt specification is maintained and openly documented at llmstxt.org , the spec is short and worth reading start to finish. Most Shopify stores don't have this file yet. That's the window.
Actionable step: Visit your store's /llms.txt path. If you get a 404, create the file following the llmstxt.org spec and add it to your store's root directory.
5. Run a Live Prompt Test
The fastest reality check costs nothing. Open ChatGPT or Perplexity and type something close to: "Where can I buy [your product type] online?" or "Best [your product category] for [your target customer]." Watch what comes back. A passing result: your store name or URL appears somewhere in the response or in the cited sources. This isn't a controlled test, but it tells you quickly whether AI platforms are surfacing you at all in your category.
Run the same prompt three or four times , AI responses vary by run. Document which competitors appear consistently. If they show up every time and you don't, the first four checks in this audit are almost certainly why. AI shopping isn't a black box. It reads data. If your data isn't there, neither are you.
Actionable step: Run five different product-related prompts across both ChatGPT and Perplexity. Write down every competitor that appears. That's your competitive baseline , and your to-do list.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is products.json and why does it matter for AI visibility?
products.json is a public endpoint built into every Shopify store. It returns your full product catalog as structured JSON data , titles, prices, variants, availability, images. AI shopping crawlers use it to read your inventory without scraping individual product pages one by one. If the endpoint is inaccessible, AI platforms have no reliable way to pull your product data, regardless of how good your SEO is.
Which AI bots should I allow in my robots.txt?
At minimum: OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot for OpenAI, PerplexityBot for Perplexity, and Googlebot for Google AI Overviews. OpenAI maintains a full list of their crawlers at platform.openai.com/docs/bots. The default Shopify robots.txt doesn't block any of them, but custom configurations and third-party apps sometimes add broad bot blocks that catch AI crawlers as collateral damage. Check yours specifically.
My product pages have some schema. Is partial schema enough?
No. Google Search Central explicitly lists price and availability as required fields for products to appear in AI-powered shopping surfaces. A Product schema that's missing either won't qualify , even if every other field is present. Run Google's Rich Results Test on your top five products and treat any critical error as a blocking issue, not a nice-to-fix.
Do I need an llms.txt file if I already have a sitemap?
Yes , they serve different purposes. A sitemap tells crawlers what pages exist and when they were last updated. llms.txt tells AI language models what your site is, what it sells, and how to understand its structure. Your sitemap handles discovery. llms.txt handles comprehension. Both matter if you want AI to recommend your store with any accuracy.
What if I fail most of these checks?
Most Shopify stores do. That's not a criticism , it's just where the market sits right now. The stores that fix these issues in the next six to twelve months will have a compounding visibility advantage over the ones that wait. Start with the two easiest wins: verify OAI-SearchBot isn't blocked in robots.txt, and confirm products.json is accessible. Those checks take five minutes and are fully reversible if anything goes sideways.
Find Out Where Your Store Actually Stands
We built an AI commerce audit that runs these checks , and about 40 more , against your Shopify store. Real data. Real gaps. No guesswork.
You'll see exactly which AI platforms can read your store, which products are getting picked up, and what's blocking visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI.
