How should product feeds be structured for AI shopping agents?
Agents read feeds before pages. Write attribute-rich titles, fill structured fields instead of burying facts in prose, keep availability and pricing accurate, and make policies machine-readable.
Should a store let AI shopping agents apply discount codes?
Agents hunt coupons at machine speed. Classify which codes they may use, rate-limit attempts, and log every application before margin leaks.
What belongs in an AI agent traffic log for a storefront
Record the claimed agent identity, the authentication evidence behind it, what it read and did, and the outcome. A storefront that cannot attribute agent traffic cannot manage it.
How to verify an AI shopping agent before checkout
A claimed agent name is not proof. Use authenticated identity, scoped authorization, and transaction controls before letting software buy.
What should happen when an AI shopping agent fails at checkout?
Keep the cart intact, explain what failed, and hand control back to the shopper. A failed agent action should not force the customer to start over.
The AI Commerce Watch blog
Do not trust an AI crawler name without verification
A user-agent string is a claim, not proof of identity. Use network and request evidence when enforcement matters, and keep robots.txt as a preference signal for compliant crawlers rather than an authentication system.
How to publish a clear robots.txt policy for AI crawlers
Use robots.txt to state crawl preferences for compliant agents, keep rules specific to user-agent and path, and test the file after changes. Do not treat it as security or as proof that every bot will comply.
The Merchant's Guide to AI Crawlers: Who Is Reading Your Catalog and Why
GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and a growing cast of AI crawlers now read ecommerce sites at scale. Some send shoppers back; some just take. A field guide to telling them apart.
When AI Agents Start Buying: What Agentic Checkout Means for Your Store
AI assistants are moving from recommending products to purchasing them. Agentic checkout changes fraud screening, attribution, and bot policy all at once.