On April 28th, OpenAI quietly rolled out a new feature with big implications for the future of eCommerce: ChatGPT Product Discovery.
This means that when someone types a query like “best gifts for new dads” or “running shoes under $100” into ChatGPT, they’ll start seeing product recommendations — curated not through ads, but based on the actual relevance of your product pages.
If you’re running on Adobe Commerce (Magento), Shopify, or any other modern eCommerce platform, here’s what you need to know and why your dev and marketing teams should care.
What’s New: ChatGPT Just Became a Product Recommender
Forget banner ads or sponsored placements. ChatGPT’s new discovery feature isn’t paid. It’s organic, algorithmically selected, and deeply contextual.
The recommendations show up when ChatGPT detects purchase intent in a user’s prompt. Think: “best carry-on luggage,” “cool mugs for coworkers,” or “comfy dress shoes for standing all day.”
And because the interaction is happening in real-time conversation, not a search results page, the user is likely deeper in the decision-making funnel. That makes this one of the most high-intent traffic sources to emerge in years.
Why This Matters to Merchants
We’ve seen waves of discovery platforms come and go. Google Shopping, Pinterest, TikTok Shop, but this one is different:
- It’s AI-first. The engine behind it is conversational, not keyword-based.
- It’s intent-rich. These aren’t casual scrollers; they’re shoppers in motion.
- It’s organic. No ad spend required to show up (for now).
- It’s early. That means you have a chance to get ahead while most competitors are still catching up.
Translation: this isn’t something to “wait and see” on.
3 Things You Need to Do Right Now
If you want to capitalize on this new traffic channel (or at least make sure you’re not invisible to it) here’s where to start:
1. Let ChatGPT Crawl Your Site
ChatGPT relies on a bot called OAI-SearchBot to index products. But many eCommerce sites unknowingly block it in their robots.txt.
Here’s a clean config to allow access:
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /products/
Allow: /collections/
Disallow: /products/unreleased/
Or, if you’re feeling generous:
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
Pro tip: check your robots.txt and see if this bot is currently allowed. If it’s not, you won’t show up in results, period.
2. Track ChatGPT Traffic Separately
OpenAI automatically appends a UTM parameter: utm_source=chatgpt.com.
To take advantage of this:
- Set up a dedicated segment in GA4 or your analytics tool
- Track engagement, bounce rate, and conversions
- Identify which products are getting the most visibility and why
You can’t optimize what you can’t measure and this will help you see early performance trends.
3. Prepare for the Product Feed Evolution
OpenAI has confirmed that a Merchant Center-style product feed is on the way. While that’s still TBD, you can prep now by:
- Using clean structured data (schema markup) across product pages
- Optimizing product titles/descriptions for natural language (not just keywords)
- Tightening up product categories and tags to align with common search phrasing
This isn’t just good for ChatGPT, it’s good for SEO, too.
Why First Movers Will Win
Getting ahead of this now gives you a few key advantages:
- Early visibility before the space gets saturated
- Data to work with while your competitors are flying blind
- Higher likelihood of placement, as OpenAI trains its discovery model
Much like Google Shopping in its early days or TikTok’s early organic reach, those who invest early typically see better long-term performance — even after the algorithms tighten up.
What This Signals for the Future
This update isn’t a one-off. It’s a signal:
Product discovery is shifting from search bars to conversations.
We’re entering a world of AI shopping assistants, voice-driven commerce, and real-time recommendations that don’t rely on static SEO. And OpenAI is just the start.
ChatGPT Product Discovery is the beginning of what will likely become a full-fledged channel — complete with feeds, metrics, and its own playbook.
How Atwix Can Help
As a team deeply entrenched in Adobe Commerce, Shopify, and custom eCommerce solutions, we’re already helping clients get ahead by:
- Auditing robots.txt and structured data for OAI-SearchBot visibility
- Setting up custom analytics for ChatGPT traffic
- Optimizing product content for conversational queries
- Prepping for upcoming feed integration standards
If you want to show up in this new wave of product discovery, we’re ready to help you move quickly — before the next algorithm shift leaves slower players behind.