AI SEO for online stores: how to get found in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity

Nederlandse versie

AI SEO means making sure AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot can find, read and use your pages in their answers. It is also called GEO (generative engine optimization) or AEO. According to Google it is not a separate discipline: optimizing for AI search is still SEO. For an online store it comes down to a few concrete things you can check yourself.

What Google says

• There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Your page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google with a snippet.
• You do not need special files such as llms.txt or other AI text files. Google Search does not use them.
• Structured data (schema.org) is not required for the AI features, but Google still recommends it for regular search results, such as product results with price and availability. It has to match what is visible on the page.
• For products, Google points to Merchant Center: a product feed there helps show your products in AI answers and other search results.
• What to skip: cutting your text into chunks for AI, changing your writing style for AI, chasing fake mentions, and mass-producing pages for every variation of a query.
• Visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the Performance report of Google Search Console.

What OpenAI says (ChatGPT)

• Sites that block OAI-SearchBot in their robots.txt are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. Read how to allow search bots and block training bots.
• For product results, ChatGPT uses structured product data from the store itself and from other providers, among other sources. Read how ChatGPT picks products.

What Microsoft says (Copilot and Bing)

• The SEO basics still matter: a crawlable site, good titles and descriptions, internal links and links from other sites.
• AI systems break a page into pieces and choose from them. Clear headings, lists and tables help. Do not put key information only in an image, a PDF or a hidden tab.
• Be concrete and measurable. Microsoft's example is a dishwasher: give the decibel rating instead of saying "quiet".
• Use schema.org data (JSON-LD) to label what is on the page, such as a product or reviews.

What this means for an online store

The three largely say the same thing. An AI assistant comparing products needs facts it can read. Here is the checklist:

1. Allow the search bots. Check your robots.txt for OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and the other search bots. A block is the quickest way to be invisible. How to check.
2. Make sure Google knows your pages. Add your store to Google Search Console and submit your sitemap. Pages that are not indexed cannot appear in AI Overviews.
3. Complete your product data. Price, currency, availability, brand and barcode (GTIN/EAN) in JSON-LD, matching the page. How to check and fix it, and why the barcode matters.
4. Write titles and descriptions with facts. Size, weight, material, capacity. How to write them.
5. Submit a product feed in Google Merchant Center. For ChatGPT, stores outside Shopify can apply to OpenAI to submit a feed.
6. Put information in text, not images. Specifications in an image or PDF are hard for an assistant to use.

If your time is limited, you can skip llms.txt. Google does not use it and no AI company has promised to read it. More about llms.txt.

Sources

• Google Search Central: AI features and your website
• Google Search Central: Optimizing for generative AI search
• OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
• OpenAI Help Center: shopping in ChatGPT
• Microsoft Advertising: Optimizing your content for inclusion in AI search answers
• Google Search Central: Merchant listing (Product, Offer) structured data