---
title: AI Search Readiness Audit | Richard Kelsey | Ecommerce Teardown
description: A fixed-price audit of how visible your store is in Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI shopping agents. $1,200, with a written report and a 45-minute walkthrough.
url: https://ecommerceteardown.com/ai-search-readiness
---

AI Search Readiness

# 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.

[Book a Coffee](https://8coffees.ecommerceteardown.com/) [See Consulting](https://ecommerceteardown.com/consulting)

## 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](https://ecommerceteardown.com/ai-readiness-study).

### What is on this site

-   A `robots.txt` that 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.txt` file

## 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.

[Book a Coffee](https://8coffees.ecommerceteardown.com/) [See AI Strategy](https://ecommerceteardown.com/ai-strategy) [See Consulting](https://ecommerceteardown.com/consulting)