Guide
How to run an AI visibility audit for an ecommerce store
Before you change anything, find out where you stand. This audit takes an afternoon, costs nothing, and gives you a baseline to measure every change against.
AI visibility audit, defined
An AI visibility audit checks which of your products AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google recommend for your buyers' questions, whether they can read your product pages, and which sites they rely on.
01
What an AI visibility audit covers
Three things: what AI says when your buyers ask, whether AI can read your product pages, and where AI gets its information.
01
Answers
Which products AI recommends for your buyers' questions, and where yours appear.
02
Pages
Whether AI crawlers can read your product pages and the facts on them.
03
Competitors
Which products win instead of yours, and what their pages say that yours don't.
04
Sources
Which sites AI cites for your category.
02
How to run the audit yourself, for free
Seven steps. Budget an afternoon for 10 questions.
List 10 to 20 buyer questions
Write the questions a shopper asks before buying what you sell: "best ___ for ___", "___ under $50", "___ vs ___". Use your customers' words, not your product names.
Ask each one a few ways, logged out
Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google (AI Overviews or AI Mode) each question in three to five wordings, in a logged-out or private window. In our study the #1 brand changed with the wording for 88% of shopping needs, so one wording is not enough.
Record what comes back
For each answer, write down which brands and products are named, in what order, and which sites are cited. Note when one of your products appears and where.
Check AI can read your pages
Run your top product pages through our free AI product page checker: crawler access, the product facts on the page and structured data.
Compare with the winners
Open the product pages AI recommends instead of yours. Note the facts they state that yours don't: materials, sizes, who it's for, how to use it.
Look at the sources
List the sites AI cites for your questions: review sites, lists, forums, retailers. Those are where AI gets its picture of your category.
Repeat on the same questions
Run the same questions again after any change, and monthly. Only the same questions, asked the same way, show whether anything moved.
03
When to move from a spreadsheet to a tool
The manual audit works. It gets slow once you want many questions, several assistants, every product and a history over time.
Worth knowing
AI answers change from day to day, so one audit is a snapshot. Tools such as Produkto run the same buyer questions daily and record products, positions, competitors and cited sites for you. See the tools compared. We make Produkto.
04
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI visibility audit for ecommerce?
A check of how AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers treat your store: which of your products they recommend for your buyers' questions, whether they can read your product pages, and which sites they rely on.
How many questions should an audit use?
Start with 10 to 20 real buyer questions, each asked in a few wordings. Fewer questions or a single wording gives a misleading picture, because answers change with the wording.
Can I audit AI visibility for free?
Yes. Everything in the seven steps above can be done by hand in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, plus our free page checker.
How often should I repeat it?
Monthly, and after any change you want to measure. Use the same questions, asked the same way, so the results compare.
Sources
- Produkto, AI shelf study: 500 shopping questions (October 2026).
- Produkto, free AI product page checker.
See which of your products AI recommends
Produkto measures your whole Shopify catalog in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, and shows who AI picks instead.