OpenAI Adds Shopping in ChatGPT: How To Get Your Products Featured

New ChatGPT Features

Go to the top

OpenAI has rolled out an improved shopping experience for ChatGPT users. The new features were explained in an X thread and include:

• Better product results in search
• Product imagery, pricing, and reviews
• Direct links to buy a product

These product recommendations are available to all ChatGPT users (including anyone not logged in or using the free plan).

ChatGPT will also prepare its product results based on a user’s history and preferences. For example, if you specify a budget in your search or size variant, ChatGPT will record this information for future shopping experiences. However, this element of the new shopping features is only available to Pro and Plus users, and it won’t be applied in the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, or Liechtenstein. For US shoppers, ChatGPT will be able to remember your preferences.

Get Your Products Seen By Customers

Go to the top

OpenAI’s ChatGPT search delivers independent product recommendations to users searching online. That means you can’t pay to get your products to appear in search results – instead, shopping results are organic and based on third-party data.

There are a few things you can do to give your products the best chance of appearing:

• Make sure OpenAI’s search crawler has access to your website
• Update your product information – while ChatGPT won’t take data directly from your business (for now), it’s important to maintain accurate product details, such as pricing, to avoid confusing customers
• Gather feedback and reviews on your products – ChatGPT takes note of how customers, review sites, and forums view the product in question (including Amazon, Best Buy, and Reddit)
• Complete ChatGPT’s interest form to be notified when feed submissions open – OpenAI takes product details from third-party providers, but the company is exploring options to improve product listings (the form asks for your name, contact information, business details, and shopping vertical)

In its current state, there’s not much for businesses to do if they want to improve their chances of appearing in ChatGPT product recommendations. Adam Fry, ChatGPT’s search product lead at OpenAI, was interviewed by Wired:

“It’s not looking for specific signals that are in some algortihm,” says Fry. According to him, this will be a shopping experience that’s more personalized and conversational, rather than keyword-focused. “It’s trying to understand how people are reviewing this, how people are talking about this, what the pros and cons are,” says Fry.

Likely there’ll be more ways to collaborate and participate with ChatGPT’s shopping features in the future, such as a merchant program similar to Google’s Merchant Center, Perplexity’s Merchant Program, or the Copilot Merchant Program from Microsoft.

Could ChatGPT Shopping Rival Google?

Go to the top

By improving the ChatGPT shopping experience, OpenAI hopes to rival the ecommerce success of Google and Amazon. OpenAI reported that ChatGPT receives over a billion searches each week, but this is still a drop in the water in comparison to larger search engines. For example, Google processes billions of searches each day.

However, ChatGPT hopes to stand out by focusing on organic and personalized results, instead of offering paid ad placements. Still, ChatGPT isn’t shaking things up too much – it displays product information in a similar way to Google. Adam Fry told The Verge that “while OpenAI wanted the experience to look like ChatGPT, the company knows that people like to see structured information that incorporates pricing and images in a way that people are familiar with.”

So, is ChatGPT shopping worth your time? Absolutely. Getting your products featured on ChatGPT requires little effort on your part, and the channel provides additional opportunities to reach your target audience, boost traffic, and drive more sales.

ChatGPT’s shopping feature is new, and the company will be monitoring its use, testing new iterations, and working alongside businesses to help shape the search engine going forward. My parting advice? Get your foot in the door and complete the interest form to ensure your business is ready for the next steps.