OpenAI recently launched a possibly revolutionary thing.

They’ve announced that they will show updated, detailed product recommendations on their platform. 

Which means images, updated prices, and similar product data that can ease friction—and possibly change the way we shop. 

With over 5B visits a month, it makes sense for shopping experience to be one of the key things to improve on—but what does it mean for you, the retailer? 

This article should explain what this actually means, and how you might appear on it.

What is ChatGPT Shopping?

ChatGPT Shopping is that. 

It is a new feature launched by OpenAI to create a more seamless, AI-driven shopping experience within the ChatGPT platform. 

ChatGPT shopping will allow you to search for fashion, beauty, home goods, electronics, and other items and receive personalized product recommendations.

These recommendations will include:

• Visual ties.
• Price comparisons.
• Reviews.
• Fit advice.
• Direct links to retailers.

…all within the same interface.

The use case: No more multiple tabs. 

Your entire online shopping process can be put into a single conversation. This helps users research and shop the right products, and most importantly, without friction. 

How Does ChatGPT Select Shopping Items

This is pretty relevant as knowing this may help your brand appear among listed products.

Previously, you’d look for an item on search engine and you’d need to type a keyword—short or long “say best air purifier for basements.” 

However, with ChatGPT the selection process isn’t purely keyword based.

Yes, you’ll have to type something, but that’s more of a question than a query. Then, ChatGPT combines structured metadata from third-party sources (price, reviews, etc), as well as your specific details. 

It mayn ot show all products available, but will filter those to provide the most relevant ones, based on your query, your needs. And even your past conversations.

Here’s one example:

This was a brand-new chat, yet ChatGPT knew our agency is LA-based due to our past conversations. Interesting.

Also, if a product is not a perfect match, you can always clarify and ask for adjustments.

Example: Let’s say you want a toaster.  

We started with a simple question for our GPT. We wanted a good toaster:

But we forgot to clarify that we need a good, budget-friendly one. 

We might not like the extra features these modern techy toasters bring. Or just we just don’t want to spend north of $100 for a thing that will roast our toast a couple times a week.

So we adjust the question.

Now that’s more like it.

You can also see how ChatGPT found the cheapest toasters out there that have a solid amount of reviews, listed images, and explained its choices. 

From OpenAI itself: Product descriptions and labels (like “Budget-friendly”) are simplified for readability, but they may not always be accurate or reflect the latest market data. 

Prices are also pulled from third-party sources and might not always reflect the lowest available option.

In any case, this is a demonstration of how ChatGPT Shopping, even in its early stages, can completely wrap our current shopping experience and behavior.

Can You Run ChatGPT Shopping Ads?

At the time of writing this article, ads weren’t available on ChatGPT shopping.

In fact, in all their public announcements, OpenAI goes out of their way to tell you that all products are chosen independently.

OpenAI even says it in their tweet:

Therefore, you can’t pay your way to chatbot visibility yet. 

This is, according to OpenAI at least, a way to boost trust among users and not have a product rubbed in your face.

But, as we learned with some other platforms in the past, there is no guarantee that OpenAI won’t take advantage of its product recommendations in the future.

So it’s best to try to get your brand visible organically and slowly learn the trade of ChatGPT consumer behavior, in case you can promote your brand one day.

How to Make Your Product Visible on ChatGPT Shopping?

The key question. 

Open AI has a little guide that should help you set up your product pages for success, so make sure you check that out first.

But we’ll also make sure to simplify it.

First, you should make sure that you’re letting OpenAI’s robot crawler access your page. 

The bot’s name is OAI-SearchBot. And to make sure you haven’t blocked it, you should check your robots.txt page. 

Of course, if this sounds a bit complicated to you, it might be better for an SEO agency or a developer to check it for you.

Why is this important? When you allow the search bot in, it will automatically source your product data and meta data, making it eligible for listing on ChatGPT.

Also, since the platform will automatically add UTM tags you’ll be able to track organic traffic from ChatGPT to your store. Nice.

Robot shopping, here we go

So… what have we learned?

Although in early days, the shift ChatGPT Shopping can represent is huge. 

For example, no more juggling tabs, jumping between reviews, or cross-checking prices across five-six websites. Now, it can all happens in a single chat. 

For you, this means a new frontier. You’ll need to have clean metadata, probably some SEO best practices, and actually helpful product pages. Not just optimized to rank.

What to do if you’re an eCom brand: Now is the time to get familiar with how ChatGPT pulls product info, how its crawler works, and what it takes to show up in a conversation. 

Because while you can’t run ads yet, getting in early means you’ll understand how to work with the system before it gets crowded—or monetized.

The future of shopping is conversation.