How does ChatGPT shopping work for ecommerce?
When someone asks ChatGPT for buying advice, such as "best cordless clippers for a horse that hates noise", it can show a set of products with images, prices, ratings and links to the shops that sell them.
OpenAI says these results are chosen independently and aren't ads. It picks products based on what the shopper asked, what it knows about them from the conversation, and the product information it can find: structured data from shops and third-party providers, product pages and reviews from across the web. If the shopper wants to buy, ChatGPT links them to a merchant, or in some markets lets them check out in the chat.
What does ChatGPT read about your products?
Whatever it can reach and understand. That means your product pages, your structured data, any feed you submit, and what other sites say about the product.
- Product name, brand, price, currency and stock, in plain text and in Product schema.
- Clear descriptions with the specs buyers compare: size, weight, materials, compatibility, what's in the box.
- Delivery and returns terms that are easy to find.
- Reviews and ratings, on your site and on the sites that review your category.
- Comparison and buying guides elsewhere that name your products.
Can you submit products to ChatGPT?
Yes, in a growing number of cases. OpenAI runs a merchant programme where shops can apply to share a product feed, so ChatGPT has accurate prices, stock and details straight from you.
OpenAI publishes a product feed specification for this. If you already keep a clean feed for Google Merchant Center, most of the work is done: the same fields, kept current. Check OpenAI's merchant pages for who can apply from the UK today, as the programme is still expanding.
What is checkout inside ChatGPT?
It's a way for shoppers to buy without leaving the chat. OpenAI calls it Instant Checkout, and it runs on the Agentic Commerce Protocol, an open standard OpenAI built with Stripe.
The merchant stays the seller. You keep the customer relationship, handle the order and set the returns policy. It launched in the US first, so for most UK shops today the job is getting products shown and clicked. If checkout matters to you, it's worth planning your feed and order systems so you're ready when it arrives.
How do you get your shop ready for ChatGPT shopping?
This is the order we work in for ecommerce clients. Each step makes the next one count.
- Ask ChatGPT the buying questions your customers ask, in fresh chats, and note which products and shops appear.
- Check robots.txt lets OAI-SearchBot crawl your shop, alongside Googlebot and Bingbot.
- Make sure prices, stock, specs and delivery terms are in the static HTML, not loaded later by scripts.
- Add Product schema with price, availability and reviews, matching what's on the page.
- Clean up your product feed so names, prices and stock match the site exactly.
- Apply to OpenAI's merchant programme if it's open to you, using the same feed.
- Write buying guides and comparison pages that answer the questions shoppers ask before they choose.
- Earn reviews and mentions on the sites that review your category.
- Track visits from chatgpt.com in GA4 and re-run your buying questions every month.
Does Google work the same way?
Much of it, yes. Google uses Product structured data and Merchant Center feeds to show products in Search, Shopping and its AI answers.
That's the good news for ecommerce brands: one set of clean product data does both jobs. A shop that's well set up for Google Shopping is usually most of the way to being readable by ChatGPT too.