Everyone’s talking about how to get their products to show up in ChatGPT and other AI assistants. But what's real and what's BS?

Myth: Updating Product Pages = High Rankings in ChatGPT

A lot of vendors claim you can magically rank higher in ChatGPT by rewriting product descriptions, updating schema, or adding specific keywords. The truth is less exciting:

• Updating product pages and schema is basic hygiene. Think of it as table stakes. You need these updates just so your products show up properly in searches. But they won't guarantee higher rankings.

• ChatGPT doesn't rank products like traditional SEO. It uses many different signals beyond your product page content.

Insights from Perplexity: Can AI Search Be Optimized?

Perplexity, another popular AI-driven search tool, emphasizes transparency and genuine quality over optimization tricks. Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s Chief Business Officer, explains clearly:

Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity's CEO, similarly cautions:

This shows us there is emphasis on authentic, third-party reviews over page-level optimizations.

Reality: Reviews Drive Rankings in ChatGPT

If you're looking to genuinely influence how ChatGPT and other LLM assistants pick products, focus on public reviews. AI assistants heavily rely on reviews from sites like Reddit, Trustpilot, Google Customer Reviews, and YouTube. These sources provide neutral, credible information.

The best way to increase these reviews quickly? Influencers.

• Use AI-driven influencer campaign agents (such as aigencia) to ship over 1,000 product gifts monthly to relevant influencers.

• Influencers then generate authentic, independent reviews on high-authority platforms.

This approach genuinely boosts your product's visibility and ranking, because ChatGPT values credible, third-party reviews far above what brands say about themselves.

Speculation: The Future of AI Shopping & MCP Servers

A big change is coming soon with the tight integration between Shopify and ChatGPT, allowing users to buy directly within ChatGPT.

However, a key question remains: How will ChatGPT access the latest product info?

Currently, platforms like ChatGPT rely heavily on crawling web pages. But product updates, like Finisterre’s newest swimwear collection (as I demo’d in my agentic commerce video), often don't appear immediately because crawlers haven't reindexed recently updated pages. The latest crawl for Finisterre might be months old, leaving shoppers unaware of new releases.

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Enter MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers:

An MCP server allows brands to provide their latest product data directly to AI systems like ChatGPT.

But how will ChatGPT discover these MCP servers?

1. Each brand could manage its own MCP server and Shopify could launch a brand MCPs directory that links to each brand MCP server which LLMs can read from.

2. Shopify might vectorize all of the product data from all brands on its platform and offer it directly under one super MCP server. But this raises cost concerns since vector embedding product data at scale isn't cheap and it’s unclear if Shopify would want to take on this cost burden.

3. Another possibility: Google's emerging A2A protocol (.well-known/agent.json) (like sitemap.xml but for AI agents) could help LLMs discover these MCP servers automatically without needing a main directory.

While details remain uncertain, it’s clear the future of product search won't be crawling static pages. It will likely involve dynamic, direct data feeds via MCP servers.

Bottom Line

• Updating your product pages is important but won't move the needle for ranking high in AI search.

• Investing in massive influencer-driven review campaigns is your best current strategy to rank higher.

• Keep an eye on MCP servers and how Shopify, Google, and ChatGPT might redefine product discovery and purchase very soon. It’s never too early to prepare for this future by vectorizing your data.

Want access to aigencia’s influencer campaign aigents to scale up your creator outreach? DM Bora on LinkedIn.