ChatGPT Shopping for Businesses: Everything You Need to Know (And Do) to Get Your Products Discovered

Google does it. Bing does it. And now, ChatGPT does it. With ChatGPT Shopping, users can discover products in carousels similar to Google’s and Bing’s shopping results, giving businesses like yours a new outlet for generating revenue.

Discover the ins and outs of ChatGPT’s shopping results (including how to appear in them) now!

What is ChatGPT Shopping?

ChatGPT Shopping is OpenAI’s response to one of the most common use cases for the platform: Researching and buying products. With shopping results on ChatGPT, users see a visual carousel with relevant products and links to their product pages.

ChatGPT’s shopping carousels are not ads, though ChatGPT ads are available. Instead, listings appear based on relevance, structured data, and user intent.

How does ChatGPT Shopping work?

There are several components (or ranking factors) to ChatGPT’s shopping results, including:

It’s important to note that ChatGPT does not rank product results based on:

• Price
• Shipping costs and policies
• Return policies

However, these factors can determine whether a product gets recommended.

If a user’s search intent requests a product under a certain amount or a provider with XYZ shipping or return policies, then ChatGPT will search for products that meet those requirements. And that’s okay! You want qualified traffic vs. vanity visits to your site.

You can see how ChatGPT generates its shopping results in the example below:

Once the results generate, users can click on different listings to see:

• Additional product images
• Where they can purchase the item
• Why they might like the item
• What other people are saying about the item

Users also have the option to select an item and ask ChatGPT for more details.

How does ChatGPT Shopping compare to Google and Bing?

So how do the product carousels compare for ChatGPT vs. Google? What about Bing? Compare all three below:

For a visual comparison, check out these examples for “best July 4th toddler outfits under $35”:

ChatGPT

Google

Bing

There are a few observations from these examples:

1. One of the ChatGPT product listings also appears in Bing’s results
2. Two of the ChatGPT product listings also appear in Google’s results
3. The ChatGPT and Google product listings are all for girls, suggesting personalization

It’s no secret that ChatGPT’s third-party data providers include Bing and that its crawler, OAI-SearchBot, is indexing content from across the web, which explains some of these initial similarities.

Not to mention, ChatGPT uses fan-out queries to search the broader web (including Google’s search index) for products relevant to the user’s initial search.

Why does ChatGPT Shopping matter?

67% of businesses expect to increase their spending on AI over the next three years.

There are a few reasons ChatGPT Shopping matters to marketers and business owners:

1. Cost: ChatGPT’s product carousels are not You don’t have to pay to get discovered.
2. Reach: As the #1 AI chatbot, ChatGPT reaches more than 800 million people each week.
3. Overlap: ChatGPT Shopping overlaps with ecommerce search engine optimization (SEO).
4. Targeting: ChatGPT’s personalization makes it easier than ever to reach your market.

With ChatGPT Instant Checkout, that experience goes a step further, enabling users to purchase products directly through the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP).

Plus, optimizing for ChatGPT Shopping now (versus later) gives ecommerce stores like yours a first-mover advantage. These optimizations will also improve your visibility in other search and answer engines, like Google, Perplexity AI, and more.

How to appear in ChatGPT Shopping results

Generative AI-driven traffic is growing 165x faster than traditional organic search.

Now, let’s unwrap how to appear in ChatGPT Shopping results:

1. Allow ChatGPT’s crawlers: First, make it possible for ChatGPT’s crawler (OAI-SearchBot) to crawl your site. This optimization usually requires no action unless your robots.txt file has disallowed OAI-SearchBot. If that’s the case, update your robots.txt file.
2. Practice ecommerce SEO: Rank higher in search engine results and increase your chances of appearing in ChatGPT responses with ecommerce SEO optimizations, which include SEO copy for product pages, schema markup, site architecture, and more.
3. Use Product schema markup: Structured metadata, which includes Product markup, is one of ChatGPT’s selection factors for its shopping results. Use the markup to provide ChatGPT with essential information, like pricing, product name, average rating, and more.
4. Upload products to Google Merchant Center: Give ChatGPT even more data for its shopping results with Google Merchant Center, which also supports Google’s AI-powered features, like AI Overviews.
5. Enhance product visuals: You have little time to capture a user’s attention in search results, whether on ChatGPT or Google. Make it count with high-quality visuals that show your product vs. hiding it in lifestyle shots.
6. Improve review generation: Invest in review generation, like through automated email drip campaigns, to build the number (and quality) of reviews for your products, which can serve as a powerful trust signal for users shopping on answer engines like ChatGPT.
7. Document product details in-depth: People use ChatGPT to get personalized recommendations, which means ChatGPT thrives on in-depth product descriptions and use cases, such as whether a product is best for runners with flat feet. On your product pages, document the features and use cases of your offerings.

Bonus tips for optimizing for ChatGPT

Learn more about getting discovered in ChatGPT conversations, from product listings to citations:

1. Create a generative AI channel in GA4: Track traffic from ChatGPT and other AI platforms, like Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity AI, with a custom channel group in Google Analytics 4. You can even use ChatGPT to generate the necessary regex!
2. Improve brand positioning: Get discovered by your target market by helping ChatGPT better understand your brand’s purpose and audience. Building reviews, product documentation, and online communities can give ChatGPT valuable context that changes when — and who — it recommends your company.
3. Consider ChatGPT advertising: Take advantage of the opportunity and maximize your real estate on the platform by allocating some ad spend for experimenting with ChatGPT ads.

FAQs about ChatGPT Shopping

Get discovered across ChatGPT conversations

From conversational mentions to product carousels, there are multiple options for ecommerce stores looking to grow their visibility and revenue from ChatGPT — and hundreds of experts at WebFX who can help.

Ready to get listed? Contact us online or call 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist today about our ChatGPT optimization services and ChatGPT advertising plans.