Research · October 29, 2026
We read 5,058 Shopify stores. 95.7% now have a page for AI shopping agents.
Every Shopify store in the top 300,000 sites on the web, read on October 29: robots.txt, sitemaps, the homepage, and one product page each. Shopify added the AI shopping page itself. Almost no store blocks AI search. The gaps are in product data.
- 95.7%
- serve an agents.md file
- The page Shopify lists for AI shopping agents
- 1.2%
- block any AI bot
- 61 of 5,055 robots.txt files
- 37.3%
- give a GTIN in product data
- Google recommends it for product results
- 13.2%
- put shipping in product data
- Merchant Center or Search Console can supply it instead
Shopify turned it on for almost everyone.
97.6% of these stores list a file called sitemap_agentic_discovery.xml in their sitemap. It holds one URL: /agents.md.
That page tells AI agents, such as a shopping assistant in a chat app, how to search the store, build a cart, and check out, with the buyer approving the order. It uses UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol), an open standard for agent shopping. Shopify writes the page: 4,754 of them open with the same heading, "Agent Instructions" and the store's name. It answered on 4,840 of 5,058 stores.
Shopify's agent documentation<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://www.allbirds.com/agents.md</loc>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
</urlset>allbirds.com/agents.md, its opening line
You can browse products and shop at Allbirds's online store, https://www.allbirds.com, on your user's behalf.
5 stores block ChatGPT search.
We tested each store's robots.txt against each bot, the way Google reads the file. Only 61 of 5,055 stores block any AI bot from the homepage. Search bots are almost never blocked. Training bots are blocked a little more often.
Search bots decide whether a store can appear in ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude, and Bing. The rest decide whether your pages train AI models, and for Google-Extended, whether they ground Gemini answers. Blocking those is a business choice.
What each AI crawler does| Bot | Used for | Stores that block it |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | ChatGPT search | 5 (0.1%) |
| ChatGPT-User | ChatGPT visits a page for a user | 6 (0.1%) |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity search | 9 (0.2%) |
| Claude-SearchBot | Claude search | 2 (under 0.1%) |
| Bingbot | Bing and Copilot | 1 (under 0.1%) |
| GPTBot | OpenAI model training | 51 (1%) |
| ClaudeBot | Anthropic model training | 28 (0.6%) |
| Google-Extended | Gemini training and grounding | 29 (0.6%) |
| Applebot-Extended | Apple model training | 24 (0.5%) |
| CCBot | Common Crawl | 52 (1%) |
The basics are there. The details are not.
We read the first product in each store's product sitemap. Shopify themes add Product structured data, so price, brand, and stock status are nearly universal. The fields a store has to fill in itself are rarer: a GTIN on 37.3% of product pages, shipping on 13.2%.
Google lists GTIN, shipping, and returns as recommended for merchant listings. For shipping and returns, Google also accepts settings in Merchant Center or Search Console. Check that one of the three has yours.
Google's merchant listing guide| In the product's structured data | Product pages |
|---|---|
| Product structured data on the page | 93.2% |
| Brand | 92.5% |
| Stock status, of pages with an offer | 97.8% |
| GTIN (barcode number) | 37.3% |
| Review rating | 31.2% |
| Return policy | 16.5% |
| Shipping details | 13.2% |
The median store lists 878 products and 174 collections.
- 33.5%
- have sitemap copies for other countries or languages
- Shopify Markets adds these
- 8%
- list more collection pages than products
- 335 of 4,207 stores
- 99.6%
- have a canonical tag on the homepage
- 5,039 stores
- 44.3%
- have hreflang tags on the homepage
- They point Google to each language version
Check your own store
01
Open yourstore.com/agents.md.
If it loads, it tells AI shopping agents how to shop your store. Read it once so you know what they see.
02
Open yourstore.com/robots.txt.
Look for OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, or Bingbot followed by Disallow: /. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. To change the file, edit robots.txt.liquid: Online Store, then Edit code.
Test your robots.txt for AI bots03
Open Search Console, then Shopping, then Merchant listings.
Its non-critical issues show the recommended fields your products leave out, such as GTIN or shipping.
How we did it
See which of your store's pages Google left out.
AI search starts with pages search engines can find. The free report reads your Search Console: up to 500 pages, which ones Google left out and why, and the 3 to fix first.
Get my free reportFree for up to 500 pages. No card needed. Sign in with the Google account you use for Search Console.