Insights / AI answers
AI answers · September 15, 2026 · 9 min read

SEO for ChatGPT, for a store with a catalog

Most writing on this subject is aimed at software companies. A store has products, variants, and a feed, and that changes the work.

A catalog is not an article

Advice written for software companies assumes your value is explained in prose. A store's value is in a catalog: cuts, weights, breeds, grades, shipping windows. If that detail only exists inside a variant picker, an AI engine has nothing to quote.

Say the thing only you can say

For a food brand that means the specifics: the breed, whether it is grass finished or grain finished, how long it hangs, who processes it. Generic category copy gets you passed over in favor of whoever wrote down the detail.

Free surfaces first

On one client account the three highest value products in the catalog, 31.5 percent of attributed revenue, had never been published to Google's free product listings. Before optimizing for answer engines, get the catalog onto the surfaces that are already free.

What to expect, honestly

Commercial AI prompt volume is still small next to Google. For service terms in this category the AI side runs about 1 percent of Google volume. Where AI prompting genuinely concentrates is on AI search topics themselves, at roughly 42 percent of the Google figure. Plan accordingly rather than moving the whole budget.

On the numbers in this piece

Real numbers from a live client account. Every result page carries the before, the after, and what the figure does not prove.

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