The shift to agentic commerce
Shopping behaviour is changing. Instead of browsing product pages, consumers are asking AI assistants: "What's the best pour-over coffee set under $80?" or "Compare organic cotton t-shirts for men." These agents don't see your storefront — they read your structured product data, evaluate it against alternatives, and generate ranked recommendations.
This is agentic commerce. The agent acts on behalf of the shopper, filtering, comparing, and recommending. Your product either makes it into the agent's response or it doesn't. There is no page 2.
How AI shopping agents evaluate products
AI agents process product data differently from search engines. They are looking for:
The five AI engines that matter
Emerging protocols for AI agents
New web standards are emerging to help AI agents discover and interact with product data. llms.txt provides instructions for language models visiting your site. agents.txt defines permissions for AI agents (similar to robots.txt but for agentic use cases). Schema.org Product markup remains the foundation, but these new protocols signal forward-thinking data readiness.
OptAEO checks compliance across all five protocol groups: llms.txt, agents.txt, Schema.org, Data Quality fundamentals, and Agentic Storefront readiness. Most merchants start with Schema.org and Data Quality — the highest-impact protocols.
Track when AI agents cite your products
OptAEO's citation tracking monitors when AI engines reference your products in their responses. See which products get recommended, which engines drive the most visibility, and how citation trends correlate with your AEO score improvements. This closes the feedback loop: fix data, improve scores, measure actual AI visibility. Available on Business plan.
Getting started
Connect your Shopify store to OptAEO and get your first AEO score in under 60 seconds. The free plan includes one full scan with a complete breakdown of data quality issues and AI visibility factors. No credit card required.