ChatGPT shopping is the set of ChatGPT features that show products inside an answer, with images, prices and links to stores. To get your products shown, let OpenAI's search bot, OAI-SearchBot, read your store and keep product data complete. Add structured data too: code that states price and stock in a standard format, so software can read them.
For a store in India, the answer has two parts. First, those steps apply wherever ChatGPT shows products, and you can take them today. If you sell through Shopify or Etsy, OpenAI says your catalogue is already integrated, with no extra setup or application (OpenAI merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026). Second, OpenAI says ChatGPT shopping is live for users in the US and will expand to more regions. India is not named (OpenAI merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026).
You cannot pay for a place: OpenAI says product results are selected independently by ChatGPT and are not ads (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026). For the wider shift, read our guides to agentic commerce and AI in ecommerce.
What is ChatGPT shopping?
ChatGPT shopping is product discovery inside ChatGPT. When a question shows shopping intent, ChatGPT can show product options with images, product details and links to sites where the shopper can learn more or buy (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
On 24 Mar 2026 OpenAI described a more visual version with side-by-side comparison, built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol, an open standard for shopping through AI assistants (OpenAI, checked 7 Oct 2026). OpenAI's pages describe three parts.
- Product results. Products appear as cards, small panels for one product each. Opening a card can show a list of merchants that sell it (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
- Shopping research. OpenAI introduced it on 24 Nov 2025 as a way to build a personalised buyer's guide. It said the feature was rolling out on mobile and web, for logged-in users on the Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans (OpenAI, checked 8 Oct 2026).
- Instant Checkout. A Buy button that completes an order inside the chat. OpenAI's merchants page says it is moving away from standalone Instant Checkout, with purchases completed on the merchant's own site or app (OpenAI merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026), while its help article still mentions an Instant Checkout option for some eligible products and merchants (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026). So OpenAI's pages disagree.
How does ChatGPT choose which products to show?
OpenAI says a product appears when ChatGPT judges it relevant to what the shopper wants. It looks at the question and at context such as Memory, which is what ChatGPT remembers about a user, or custom instructions (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
For shopping research, OpenAI says results are organic, meaning unpaid, and based on publicly available retail sites (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
OpenAI names factors, and we found no published formula. The shopping help article describes four things (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
- What it weighs. Price, reviews, the options available and ease of use are the examples OpenAI gives. A stated budget makes price count for more.
- Where the data comes from. Product facts held as data, such as price and description, from first-party and third-party providers, plus other third-party content. OpenAI calls this structured metadata.
- How the card is written. ChatGPT may write simplified product titles and descriptions from the information it receives.
- Which stores are listed. The merchant list uses data from third-party providers or from merchants themselves. Merchants are ranked on factors such as availability, price, quality and whether they are the maker or primary seller.
Are ChatGPT shopping results ads?
No, according to OpenAI. Its help centre says product results are selected independently by ChatGPT, are not ads and are not influenced by OpenAI's partnerships (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
ChatGPT Ads are a separate product, and OpenAI says they have launched in India. On 23 Sep 2026 it said they were available in more than 60 countries (OpenAI, checked 7 Oct 2026). OpenAI says ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans, are labelled as sponsored and are visually separate from the answer (OpenAI Help Center, checked 8 Oct 2026).
How do I get my products into ChatGPT?
There are four routes. The first two are open to any store today. None of them guarantees a place.
1. Let OAI-SearchBot read your store
OAI-SearchBot is the crawler, a bot that fetches web pages, that OpenAI uses for ChatGPT search. OpenAI says sites that opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links (OpenAI crawler docs, checked 7 Oct 2026).
The setting lives in robots.txt, the file at yourstore.com/robots.txt that tells bots what they may read. OpenAI says a change takes about 24 hours to apply, and that GPTBot, its training crawler, is a separate setting (OpenAI crawler docs, checked 7 Oct 2026). See our AI crawlers list, or let Depra AI's AI crawler checker read your file.
2. Make product data easy for software to read
OpenAI says ChatGPT uses structured metadata such as price and product description (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026). We found no OpenAI page that says a particular markup gets a product listed.
Still add Product structured data to each product page. Google uses it to show price, availability and review ratings in its results (Google Search Central, checked 7 Oct 2026).
3. On Shopify, stay eligible for Shopify Catalog
Shopify Catalog is the service that shares a store's product data with AI channels. OpenAI says Shopify and Etsy catalogues are already integrated, with no extra setup or application (OpenAI merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026). Shopify says you do not need to do anything for ChatGPT to discover your products through Shopify Catalog (Shopify Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
Shopify adds rules of its own, and one matters in India: to sell on ChatGPT, a store must sell to customers in the United States (Shopify Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026). The India section and the checklist below set them out. Depra AI for Shopify stores covers tracking.
4. Apply for a direct product feed
A product feed is a structured list of your products with prices and stock. OpenAI says a product feed is not required if ChatGPT already crawls your site, but a feed gives you more control over how your products appear (OpenAI merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026).
Merchants apply through a form on the merchants page and join a waitlist. The page says a self-serve merchant platform is planned for later this year, so treat it as announced, not live (OpenAI merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026). OpenAI's developer docs say onboarding product feeds is currently available to approved partners (OpenAI commerce docs, checked 7 Oct 2026).
Does ChatGPT shopping work in India?
OpenAI's pages do not confirm it. OpenAI says ChatGPT shopping is live for users in the US and will expand to more regions. India is not named (OpenAI merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026).
So test it yourself. Ask your buying questions in ChatGPT from India and note whether products appear as cards.
Three other official statements add detail.
- The OpenAI help article. It says shopping is available in ChatGPT on mobile and web, and gives no country list (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
- Shopify stores. Shopify says a store must sell to customers in the United States to sell on ChatGPT, and can be based outside the United States (Shopify Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026). An Indian store that sells to US customers can meet this rule.
- Payments. In October 2025 Razorpay, NPCI and OpenAI said they were piloting UPI payments inside ChatGPT, which concerns payment, not product results (Razorpay newsroom, checked 7 Oct 2026).
A checklist for a Shopify store
Work through these nine steps in order.
- 1. Check your plan and store status. Shopify Catalog needs the Starter plan or higher and a store that is not in private mode (Shopify Help Center, checked 8 Oct 2026).
- 2. Check every product. Each needs a title, an image, a price above zero and a product URL. It must be published to your online store and must not be Unlisted or hidden from search engines (Shopify Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
- 3. Complete your policies. Fill in the Terms of service, Privacy policy, and Return and refund policy under Settings > Policies. Shopify requires them to sell on ChatGPT (Shopify Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
- 4. Open Sales channels > Agentic. Shopify lists your AI channels there. The ChatGPT channel is active by default for eligible stores. Shopify says selling in it carries no fees beyond your standard payment processing fees (Shopify Help Center, checked 8 Oct 2026).
- 5. Check robots.txt. Open yourstore.com/robots.txt and confirm no rule blocks OAI-SearchBot. Shopify warns that a wrong edit to the robots.txt.liquid template can lose all traffic (Shopify Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026). The same page says blocking AI crawlers affects open-web discovery only, not data shared through Shopify Catalog.
- 6. Rewrite thin descriptions. State what the product is, who it is for, its size and its material or ingredients, in text. If those details sit in metafields, which are custom fields, Shopify Catalog Mapping can point the catalogue at them (Shopify Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
- 7. Check structured data. Make sure each product page carries Product structured data with price and availability. Our Shopify SEO guide covers product pages.
- 8. Keep price and stock accurate everywhere. OpenAI names price and availability among the factors used to rank merchants (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026). Show the same numbers on your store, your marketplace listings and any feed.
- 9. Track what ChatGPT shows. Record which products and stores appear for your buying questions, on a fixed schedule.
How do I check whether my products appear in ChatGPT?
Ask ChatGPT the buying questions your customers ask, without your brand name, from the country you sell in. Repeat each one several times, because answers vary between runs. Note whether product cards appeared, whose products they showed and which stores were listed.
For visits, OpenAI says ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to referral URLs, the links that send a visitor to your site. Analytics tools can then count those visits (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026).
Depra AI runs the first check on a schedule. It asks ChatGPT your tracked questions every day, with web search on, from inside the country you choose, and records the products each answer showed. An answer that shows products is called a shopping answer.
OpenAI says ChatGPT shopping is live in the US today and will expand (OpenAI merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026). So a brand that tracks questions for India may see few or no products in its Shopping report until ChatGPT shows products there. Depra AI records products whenever ChatGPT shows them in a tracked answer.
The Shopping report ranks brands by the share of shopping answers that show their products. It also lists the top merchants, the questions that trigger products and the top products.
Product visibility describes the report, and product visibility in AI search covers the method. DepraBot, the Depra AI web reader, reads your store's product list so Depra AI knows which products are yours. On Shopify that needs no app and no access token.
Percentages are counted over shopping answers, not all answers. Only ChatGPT returns products: Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews are tracked for brand mentions and sources. Depra AI offers no AI referral traffic or sales attribution, so it does not show visits or sales that come from AI answers. It never changes your store.
What can you not control?
You control your own data and access. OpenAI controls the rest, and its shopping help article describes most of it (OpenAI Help Center, checked 7 Oct 2026). Four things stay out of your hands.
- Whether products appear, and how. ChatGPT decides when a question shows shopping intent, how products rank and how each card is worded.
- Which store gets the link. If a marketplace also sells your product, ChatGPT decides which sellers to list and in what order. Our guide to marketplace visibility in AI answers covers that side.
- What other sites say. OpenAI says ChatGPT also considers reviews and other third-party content. How to get ChatGPT to recommend your brand covers the sites it reads.
- The rollout. No OpenAI page we checked gives a date for India.