---
title: "How do ecommerce brands get chosen by AI shopping assistants?"
description: "By making every listing, retailer page and review source agree, so ChatGPT, Google, Rufus and Perplexity can find, compare and trust your products."
canonical: "https://underneath.agency/resources/ecommerce-brands-ai-shopping-assistants"
published: 2026-10-07
updated: 2026-10-08
publisher: "Underneath (https://underneath.agency/agent)"
entity: "https://underneath.agency/.well-known/entity.json"
---
Guide · AI search

# How does an ecommerce brand get its products chosen by AI shopping assistants?

By making the same accurate facts about each product show up everywhere an assistant looks: your own store, every retailer and marketplace listing, product feeds, reviews and the editorial sites that compare products. Shoppers now ask ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Amazon’s Rufus what to buy, and those assistants draw on different sources. A brand that sells across many channels has to be legible in all of them.

## The short version

1. AI shopping is now a measurable sales channel. [Adobe](https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/01/adobe-holiday-shopping-season) counted a 693.4% rise in traffic from AI tools to US retail sites over the 2025 holidays, a season in which Americans spent $257.8 billion online.
2. The visits are worth more than average. In March 2026, Adobe’s data showed [AI traffic converted 42% better](https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/16/ai-traffic-to-us-retailers-rose-393-in-q1-and-its-boosting-their-revenue-too/) than other traffic and earned 37% more revenue per visit.
3. Marketplaces have their own assistants. Amazon says Rufus was used by 300 million customers in 2025 and drove nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales, as [Modern Retail reported](https://www.modernretail.co/?p=159156).
4. [OpenAI documents](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-improved-shopping-results-from-chatgpt-search) that when several merchants sell a product, ChatGPT ranks them on availability, price, quality and whether the seller is the maker or primary seller. Which channel gets the sale is part of the answer.
5. The assistants do not agree on sources. In a September 2026 audit, [ChatGPT and Gemini shared only 5.4%](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.18729) of the websites they showed for the same product question, so visibility in one says little about the others.

## Who is the shopper, and what is an AI-assisted sale worth to a multichannel brand?

The shopper is any consumer researching a purchase, and the sale can land on your site or a retailer’s.

Most consumer brands no longer sell through one door. A vacuum, a toy or a skincare line is typically sold on the brand’s own store, on Amazon and Walmart, through Target or a specialty chain, and sometimes on Etsy or a resale site. The executive question is not only “will an assistant mention us?” but “when it does, where does the shopper buy, and at what margin?”

The market is large and still shifting online. The [US Census Bureau](https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.pdf) estimates retail ecommerce sales of $340.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, 17.1% of all retail sales and up 12.2% from a year earlier. Over the 2025 holiday season, [Adobe](https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/01/adobe-holiday-shopping-season) found electronics ($59.8 billion), apparel ($49.0 billion) and furniture ($31.1 billion) drove more than half of online spending.

What one AI-assisted sale is worth depends on your channel mix. A sale on your own store keeps the full margin and the customer’s email. A sale on a marketplace carries fees but may be the shopper’s default. We infer that an ecommerce brand should value AI visibility in two layers: being named for the category question, and being shown with the right seller once the shopper picks the product. Brands that sell mainly through their own store should also read [our guide for DTC brands](https://underneath.agency/resources/dtc-brands-ai-search-sales).

## Where do AI shopping assistants sit in the path to purchase today?

They sit at the research step, between noticing a need and choosing where to buy.

Adobe calls generative AI chat services and browsers “an integral tool for consumers to find deals and research products.” In its 2025 holiday data, AI services were used most for video games, toys, appliances, electronics and personal care products. In a survey of more than 5,000 US consumers reported by [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/16/ai-traffic-to-us-retailers-rose-393-in-q1-and-its-boosting-their-revenue-too/), 39% said they used AI for online shopping and AI traffic in the first quarter of 2026 rose 393% from a year earlier. Electronics shoppers who compare specs are covered in [our guide to consumer electronics and AI search](https://underneath.agency/resources/consumer-electronics-sales-from-ai-search).

[Salesforce’s holiday data](https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/2025-holiday-shopping-data/), drawn from more than 1.5 billion shoppers, put a wider number on it: AI and agents influenced $262 billion in holiday sales, 20% of all retail sales. That figure includes retailers’ own recommendation and service tools, not only ChatGPT or Perplexity. For third-party assistants specifically, Salesforce says the share of traffic from AI search channels doubled year over year and those visitors converted nine times more often than shoppers referred by social media.

Shoppers still want to make the final call themselves. [Shopify’s 2026 holiday research](https://www.shopify.com/news/agentic-holiday-2026) found 65% of shoppers say they will use AI for at least one shopping task this season, yet only one-third said they trusted an AI agent to buy on their behalf. Today the assistant shortlists; the shopper decides.

The assistants now come from four directions:

- **Chat assistants.** ChatGPT shows product carousels, merchant lists and review summaries, and its help page still describes an [Instant Checkout](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-improved-shopping-results-from-chatgpt-search) option for some eligible merchants. OpenAI scaled that feature back in March 2026, according to [FashionUnited](https://fashionunited.com/news/retail/us-consumers-would-let-ai-agents-buy-clothes-but-not-without-a-say/2026092974919).
- **Search.** Google says its [Shopping Graph](https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/nrf-2026-remarks/) holds more than 50 billion product listings, with more than 2 billion refreshed every hour, and feeds AI Mode and the Gemini app. Its Universal Commerce Protocol, built with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, adds checkout inside those surfaces.
- **Marketplace assistants.** Amazon’s Rufus answers questions inside the store. Amazon says customers who use it are 60% more likely to complete a purchase, and its monthly active users rose 115% year over year.
- **Browser agents.** Perplexity’s Comet browser can shop on a user’s behalf. In August 2026 a federal appeals court [lifted an order](https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/9324130/amazon-loses-ban-on-perplexitys-ai-shopping-tools/) that had stopped it from shopping on Amazon, though Amazon’s lawsuit continues.

## Which questions do shoppers ask AI before they buy?

They ask for a shortlist, a comparison, a verdict on quality and the best place to buy.

The prompts below are illustrative, written to show the stages of a purchase; they are not observed data.

| Stage | Example prompt (illustrative) | What the brand needs to be true |
|---|---|---|
| Need | “Best cordless vacuum for pet hair under $300” | Product facts match the need and the price band |
| Comparison | “Shark vs Dyson for a small apartment” | Specs and reviews are easy to compare |
| Trust | “Is this brand good quality or just marketing?” | Independent reviews and press support the claims |
| Gift | “Present for an 8-year-old who loves sharks” | Use case and audience are written down |
| Where to buy | “Cheapest place to buy this blender” | Price and stock are current on every channel |

Shopify’s own example shows why descriptive prompts matter. A shopper describes a need in plain words, and the assistant matches it to a product whose page says who it is for. One apparel brand Shopify profiled, Cottonique, says its customers with eczema never searched for the word “hypoallergenic”; they described the problem. Drinks are bought the same way, by need, as [our guide for beverage brands](https://underneath.agency/resources/beverage-brands-ai-recommendations) explains.

## How does an AI answer turn into a sale, and where does the sale land?

The answer creates a shortlist, then the assistant or the shopper picks a seller.

The path for an ecommerce brand runs: a shopping question, a product named in the answer, a click to a merchant or an in-chat checkout, and later a review that feeds the next answer. The second step is where multichannel brands gain or lose margin. [OpenAI says](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-improved-shopping-results-from-chatgpt-search) that after a shopper clicks a product, ChatGPT may list the merchants that sell it, ranked on “availability, price, quality, and whether they are the maker or primary seller of that item.” That is documented by the platform. It means an out-of-stock brand store, or a price that differs across retailers, can hand the sale to someone else even after the brand has won the recommendation.

The quality of the visit is the reason to care. Adobe found AI-referred shoppers in March 2026 spent 48% longer on site and earned 37% more revenue per visit than other traffic. Back in March 2025, the same comparison ran the other way: AI visitors converted 38% worse. We infer the shoppers arriving from assistants have already done their comparison and come ready to buy.

Inside a marketplace the mechanism changes. Rufus answers on Amazon’s own pages, so the brand’s listing, images, questions and reviews on Amazon are what it has to work with; your own site does not enter the picture. Amazon also now sells “sponsored prompts” inside Rufus. Andy Jassy said nearly 20% of shoppers who interact with a brand prompt continue the conversation about that brand. Paid placement is arriving in AI shopping, alongside the organic answer.

## What decides which products and sellers an assistant shows?

Platforms document a few inputs; studies observe more; the rest is inference.

**Documented by the platform.** OpenAI says ChatGPT considers “structured metadata from first-party and third-party providers (e.g., price, product description) and other third-party content,” and that its review summaries are drawn from reviews on public websites. It says product results “are not ads, nor influenced by any OpenAI partnerships.” Shopify merchants’ data reaches ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog; other merchants can apply for a direct product feed. Google says the Shopping Graph covers inventory, prices and reviews.

**Observed in studies.** In the [September 2026 audit](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.18729) of 117 product questions, editorial and product-review sites made up 56.7% of the websites ChatGPT showed. In Google’s AI Overviews, retailers and marketplaces were 17.8% of sources and manufacturers and brands 16.1%; the authors call these categories exploratory. Repeating a question in ChatGPT produced a shifting set of sources: on average only 26.0% of domains overlapped between repeats. Our own [Reddit citation study](https://underneath.agency/research/ai-reddit-citations-study) found Google’s AI cited Reddit in 10.3% of retail and ecommerce AI Overviews, far less than for software or home services.

**Our inference.** Each assistant reads from a different place: ChatGPT from feeds and review sites, Google from its Shopping Graph and the open web, Rufus from Amazon’s catalog and reviews. A reasonable expectation is that a product described the same way, with the same price, ratings and claims, across all of them is easier for each assistant to recognize and recommend. Research covered in [what drives AI product recommendations](https://underneath.agency/resources/what-drives-ai-product-recommendations) supports the idea that hard facts such as ratings and price weigh more than the brand name when assistants can see them.

## What does a brand lose when assistants show a rival instead?

It loses the shopper before they reach any store, and often to a competitor’s product, not just its listing.

The evidence on lost revenue is indirect, so we describe the risk rather than put a number on it. Three things are clear from the sources. First, AI shopping traffic converts better than average traffic, so missing it costs more than its share of visits suggests. Second, Shopify reports brands that worked on AI readiness seeing large gains: [Stanley 1913](https://www.shopify.com/news/agentic-holiday-2026) had five times as many AI-referred US orders as in the same window a year earlier, and ILIA’s AI-referred sales nearly tripled. Those are self-reported results from Shopify’s own customers, not controlled tests. Beauty is one category where a large retailer, Ulta, already reports on its AI visitors, as [our guide for beauty retailers](https://underneath.agency/resources/beauty-retailers-ai-search) shows.

Third, many retailers are not ready. Adobe found around 34% of product pages “can’t be properly accessed by AI,” and roughly a quarter of home page and category page content not yet optimized for AI systems. A brand whose product pages fall in that group leaves the description to whatever retailer page or review site the assistant can read instead. That source may carry an old price or a rival’s comparison.

Shopify’s survey adds a competitive note: 71% of regular AI users said they were more likely to choose an independent brand this year than last. Assistants can surface smaller brands that a keyword search would have buried. For an established brand, we infer that shelf space it took for granted in search is now contested.

## How does GEO work for an ecommerce brand across retailers and marketplaces?

GEO makes your products easy for every assistant to find, describe accurately and trust, without promising placement.

Generative engine optimization (GEO) for a multichannel brand covers six areas:

1. **One set of product facts.** Names, specs, sizes, materials, prices and claims should match across your store, Amazon, Walmart, other retailers and every product feed. Inconsistency gives assistants reasons to hesitate or to pick a cleaner listing. For nursery gear, that includes safety details, as [our guide for baby product brands](https://underneath.agency/resources/baby-product-brands-ai-recommendations) explains.
2. **Feeds and readable pages.** Keep Google Merchant Center and any ChatGPT product feed current; make sure product pages render their key facts in plain text an AI system can read. Adobe’s 34% figure shows how common this gap is.
3. **Marketplace listings as AI content.** On Amazon, Rufus answers from your listing, images and reviews. Write the listing to answer the questions shoppers ask, such as fit, compatibility and care, rather than to stuff keywords.
4. **Independent coverage.** Chat assistants lean on editorial review sites. Getting products tested and reviewed by credible publications, and making review samples and specs easy to obtain, is digital PR aimed at the sources assistants cite.
5. **Reviews that say something.** Assistants summarize public reviews. Encouraging detailed, honest reviews on your site and on retailer pages gives them substance to quote. Fake or incentivized reviews are a risk, which we cover in [fake reviews and AI recommendations](https://underneath.agency/resources/fake-reviews-fake-brands-ai-recommendations).
6. **Measurement per assistant.** Check your priority category questions in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Rufus separately, repeat each question several times, and note which seller gets the click.

The product copy itself matters too; [what product content AI shopping assistants prefer](https://underneath.agency/resources/product-content-ai-shopping-assistants-prefer) covers it in depth.

## What can’t multichannel sellers learn yet from the AI shopping data?

It does not show how much of a brand’s sales AI answers cause, or how each assistant weighs channels.

Adobe and Salesforce measure clicks from AI tools to retail sites. They cannot see a shopper who reads a ChatGPT answer and then opens the Amazon app to buy, so AI influence is probably undercounted on marketplaces and overstated where checkout happens elsewhere. Salesforce’s $262 billion includes retailers’ own recommendation engines, not only AI search. Amazon’s Rufus figures are the company’s own and not independently audited.

No platform has published how it weighs a brand’s own store against a retailer selling the same item beyond the factors OpenAI lists. In-chat checkout is a moving target: [Reuters reported](https://www.zawya.com/en/business/americas/retailers-tap-ai-shopping-traffic-but-fight-to-keep-customer-data-424957) that OpenAI ended Instant Checkout in March 2026, while FashionUnited said it was scaled back. Sponsored prompts and the legal status of browser agents are also changing during 2026. And the product audit covered 117 questions in the Netherlands; source patterns in the US may differ.

## Where should an ecommerce brand start?

Start by checking how assistants answer the ten to twenty questions that drive your top categories.

Pick the categories that carry your revenue, write the questions a shopper would ask at each stage, and run them in each assistant, including Rufus if you sell on Amazon. Note whether your products appear, how they are described, which sources are cited and which seller gets the click. Then compare product facts across your store and your three largest retail partners. The gaps you find usually point to the first fixes: feeds, unreadable pages, thin listings or missing review coverage.

For a structured view across your store and retail partners, [contact our team](https://underneath.agency/contact). We will map how AI shopping assistants describe and route your products today and set out the steps most likely to improve visibility where your sell-through happens, whether that is your own store or a retail partner. Our [generative engine optimization service](https://underneath.agency/services/generative-engine-optimization) page explains how that work is carried out across channels, from matching product facts and feeds to marketplace listings and per-assistant checks.

## Frequently asked questions

### Do AI shopping assistants send shoppers to Amazon or to brand websites?

Both. OpenAI says ChatGPT ranks the merchants for a product on availability, price, quality and whether the seller is the maker or primary seller, so a brand store can be shown first when it is competitive on those points.

### Does Amazon’s Rufus use my own website?

Rufus answers inside Amazon, so it works from your Amazon listing, images, questions and reviews. Your own site matters for ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity.

### Can we pay to appear in AI shopping answers?

OpenAI says ChatGPT’s product results are not ads. Amazon sells sponsored prompts inside Rufus, and paid formats are spreading, so check each platform’s current rules.

### How do we know whether AI shopping is driving our sales?

Track AI referrals and their conversion in analytics, ask buyers how they found you, and check regularly which of your products assistants name for your category questions.

## Sources

- U.S. Census Bureau (2026-08-18), [Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, 2nd Quarter 2026](https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.pdf)
- Adobe (2026-01-07), [Holiday Shopping Season Drove a Record $257.8 Billion Online with Consumers Embracing Generative AI Tools](https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/01/adobe-holiday-shopping-season)
- TechCrunch (2026-04-16), [AI traffic to US retailers rose 393% in Q1, and it’s boosting their revenue too](https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/16/ai-traffic-to-us-retailers-rose-393-in-q1-and-its-boosting-their-revenue-too/)
- Salesforce (2026-01), [AI and agents account for $262 billion of 2025 holiday spend](https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/2025-holiday-shopping-data/)
- Modern Retail (2026-04-30), [Amazon Rufus users are up 115%, while engagement is up 400%](https://www.modernretail.co/?p=159156)
- FashionUnited (September 29, 2026), [US consumers would let AI agents buy clothes, but not without a say](https://fashionunited.com/news/retail/us-consumers-would-let-ai-agents-buy-clothes-but-not-without-a-say/2026092974919)
- Reuters, via Zawya (2026), [Retailers tap AI shopping traffic but fight to keep customer data](https://www.zawya.com/en/business/americas/retailers-tap-ai-shopping-traffic-but-fight-to-keep-customer-data-424957)
- OpenAI (2026), [Shopping with ChatGPT Search](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-improved-shopping-results-from-chatgpt-search)
- Google (2026-01-11), [The AI platform shift and the opportunity ahead for retail](https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/nrf-2026-remarks/)
- Shopify (2026-10-06), [Welcome to the first holiday season of the agentic era](https://www.shopify.com/news/agentic-holiday-2026)
- Reuters via Illawarra Mercury (2026-08-05), [Amazon loses ban on Perplexity’s AI shopping tools](https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/9324130/amazon-loses-ban-on-perplexitys-ai-shopping-tools/)
- Uberti-Bona Marin and colleagues (2026), ["If I Had to Buy Just ONE: Galaxy S26 Ultra": Auditing AI-Generated Product Recommendations](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.18729)
- Underneath (2026), [When does a Reddit thread become evidence in Google’s AI?](https://underneath.agency/research/ai-reddit-citations-study)

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