Can ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Actually See Your Store?
Some shoppers now ask an AI assistant what to buy before they open a store's website. The answer is built from what those systems can read on your site and across the web. I check whether they can read yours, and whether they have enough to recommend it.
What I check
Four things decide whether a machine can understand a store. Most stores have gaps in at least two. The same four help you show up in Google search, not only in AI answers.
Crawler access
Your robots.txt, your sitemap, and whether AI search and shopping crawlers are allowed or blocked. Blocking by accident is common, usually by an app or a default setting nobody reviewed.
Structured data
The product, offer, review and organisation markup that machines read. Missing or broken markup is the quickest fix and the one most often skipped.
Product and content clarity
Titles, descriptions, sizes, shipping and returns written in plain text, not buried in images or scripts. If a person has to hunt for it, so does a machine.
Brand mentions
Where your brand is discussed outside your own site: reviews, press, forums and directories. AI answers can draw on these as well as on your pages.
The audit
AI Search Readiness Audit
$1,200
AUD, fixed price
- Written report covering the four areas above
- 45-minute walkthrough
- A prioritised list: what to fix first, what needs a developer, what to leave
- Split between changes you can make yourself and changes that need an app or a developer
What I cannot promise
No one can promise a ranking or a mention. Google's own guidance (updated 10 December 2025) says its AI features need no special files or markup beyond ordinary good SEO. Whether OpenAI's and Anthropic's crawlers read an llms.txt file is not something either has confirmed in its own documentation that I could find.
The audit tells you what is fixable, and what is outside your control.
This site is the worked example
I did this work on ecommerceteardown.com first, so I know what it costs in time and where it gets fiddly.
Cloudflare’s Agent Readiness check scored this site 0 on 29 September 2026 and 33 on 30 September 2026. That is its Level 2, “Bot-Aware”. The check also tests things a static consulting site has no reason to run, such as an API catalogue or an MCP server, so 33 is not a target to chase to 100.
I also ran a public-file check across 123 Australian online retailers. Read the results.
What is on this site
- A
robots.txtthat names the major search and AI crawlers and states how content may be used - A sitemap generated by the build, so it cannot go stale
- Structured data on the homepage, the CV, the consulting page and each service page
- A Markdown copy of every public page for agents that ask for one
- An
llms.txtfile
Questions
Will this get my store recommended by ChatGPT?
No one can promise that. What I can do is remove the things that stop AI systems reading and understanding your store, and tell you what is outside your control.
Do I need an llms.txt file?
It is cheap to add and harmless, and I have one on this site. I treat it as a small extra, not a fix, because I could not find the major AI providers confirming that their crawlers use it.
Should I block AI crawlers?
That depends on your business. One option is to block training crawlers and allow search and shopping crawlers. On this site I allow all of them. I will walk you through the trade-off for your store.
Does this work on Shopify?
Yes. Shopify has limits on what you can edit, so the report separates what you can change yourself from what needs an app or a developer.
How long does it take?
About a week from the day I have access to your store and analytics.
Want to know where you stand?
Book a coffee and we can talk through the audit, or see the other ways I work with retailers.