If you sell through Shopify or Etsy, your catalog is already integrated, and no additional setup or application is required.
You do not know that these AI search engines copy data/result from search engines like Google, Yahoo etc.
Last time Google informed that many AI search companies copying our data and search results.
So, it is normal things.
Hello @lawrencedauchy
From the data that we are seeing, ChatGPT style results are strongly influenced by public mentions and third party content and not just on site SEO. If competitors are more prevalent in blogs, gift guides, reddit threads or market place listings such as etsy, they surface more. Your diagnosis should be where your brand is being mentioned on the web. Developing PR outreach, submitting to niche gift guides, incentivising UGC, and growing presence on platform’s like Pinterest and Etsy can help solidify those signals over time.
@lawrencedauchy the answers in this thread are really good and cover the core of what is happening. SealSubs-Roan and jerrythomasolu have the right framing: ChatGPT ranks buzz and consensus, not the store itself.
One thing I would add that has not come up yet: the gap is not just about getting mentioned externally. It is also about whether your store tells AI systems what you are specifically known for.
When ChatGPT or Gemini retrieves results for “best handmade ceramic mugs for gifts,” it is pulling from sources it has indexed and weighting them by how clearly they signal that your brand is the authoritative answer for that intent. Right now your competitor is probably getting cited because some external source framed them as the answer to that exact query. Your store, even with solid SEO, is not framing itself that way for AI systems.
The two things that tend to move the needle here beyond external mentions:
First, your on-site content needs to answer the exact questions AI is processing, not just describe your products. A page that says “why our handmade mugs make the best gifts” and answers that question in a direct, citable way is more useful to an AI than a product description that says “beautiful ceramic mug, 12 oz, hand-thrown.”
Second, your store needs a way to tell AI crawlers what you are and what you are the best option for. Most Shopify stores have never done this because it is a new requirement. A properly structured llms.txt file does this directly: it tells AI agents your store name, your niche, your best products, and what queries you should be recommended for.
We built FoundGPT specifically to address this. It runs a 21-criteria audit that identifies exactly why your store is not getting cited, rewrites your product attributes for AI recommendation intent, and auto-generates and hosts your llms.txt. It is free and takes about 5 minutes to set up: FoundGPT: Free ChatGPT SEO - Free ChatGPT SEO: audit + Auto-Fix to get found by... | Shopify App Store
Your store situation is actually a good one to fix because you have the product, the reviews, and the SEO basics. The missing layer is the AI-specific framing, and that is fixable.
Honestly feels pretty different from normal SEO.
We’ve seen stores with decent product pages and solid technical setup still barely show up, while brands that keep getting mentioned naturally across Reddit, blogs, marketplaces, communities, etc. seem to surface much more often in AI answers.
Feels a lot more reputation/discussion-driven right now.
Isn’t it the same as building backlinks for SEO?
Probably related, yeah.
Just feels a bit broader than traditional backlinks though.
Some brands seem to show up constantly in AI answers simply because they keep getting discussed/referenced naturally in different places, even when their actual SEO doesn’t seem especially strong.
Should probably be even easier then 