How to get AIs to buy from your store

Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If you see lines like Disallow: / under names like GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot, you are telling AIs not to come in. It's like shutting the shutter on millions of shoppers.

Sometimes those lines come from security plugins or old templates and the owner doesn't even know. Delete them and you're done.

Business decision: allowing GPTBot means OpenAI can use your content to answer. But if you block it, it won't recommend you either. Almost every store wants in.

The most important point. Every product page should carry structured data: an invisible block that says "this is a product, it costs 45.90 €, it's in stock, this is the size". AIs read that first and the text second. Without it, your catalog is a blurry photo to a machine.

• WooCommerce: most SEO plugins (Rank Math, Yoast) add it; check it's enabled on products.
• Shopify: it ships by default in recent themes.
• PrestaShop: use the structured data module or a rich snippets module.
• Custom build: ask for "JSON-LD schema.org Product + Offer on every product page". With that sentence your developer knows exactly what to do.

Check your work with the free test.

AIs get confused by "from €29", prices only in images, or sizes with different prices. Clean price, in text, and also in the structured data from point 2.

Declare your business details on your homepage (name, business type, contact) also in machine format. AIs hesitate to recommend stores they can't identify, just like a human shopper distrusts a shop with no sign.

Two text files at your site's root: the first summarizes what matters; the second explains what an AI agent can do on your site. Use our free generators: llms.txt · agents.md.

Many modern stores are "drawn" with JavaScript: turn it off and you see an empty page. AIs don't run JavaScript like a browser. If your site is like this, it's like showing a painting to someone with their eyes closed.

WooCommerce cache/optimization plugins usually fix this; on custom sites it's an architecture decision.

The sitemap.xml is the index of all your pages. Without it, AIs may only see your homepage and miss 90% of your products.