How ChatGPT is reshaping online shopping — and what it means for retailers and search platforms

A chatbot that recommends products, compares prices and helps people decide what to buy? ChatGPT is changing ecommerce — and rewriting the rules for visibility, SEO and brand discovery.

ChatGPT is becoming a digital shopping adviser

Following a major update in April 2025, ChatGPT began displaying structured product recommendations for relevant queries, complete with images, prices, ratings and purchase links. The suggestions respond to real questions such as:

"Which wireless headphones are good for sports?"

Instead of offering general tips, ChatGPT can now provide contextual, sometimes visual product recommendations. For the time being, these results remain free from paid placements.

Where does the product data come from?

The product suggestions in ChatGPT are based on various data sources:

• Partnerships with platforms like Shopify, Klarna, Instacart
• Web search via Bing (ChatGPT's default search provider)
• Structured web data (e.g. Schema.org markup on websites)

As a result, some retailers become visible automatically when their products appear on partner platforms or can be indexed publicly. 

For more on Bing's role in AI search, read: How ChatGPT is making Bing more important

How ChatGPT is changing search behaviour

ChatGPT does not behave like Google or Amazon. It interprets the request and curates a response:

• Fewer options, but greater relevance
• An answer rather than a list of links
• A recommendation rather than an advert

For shoppers, that means less clutter and more guidance. For retailers, it creates a stark challenge: if your product is absent from the response, the customer may never know it exists. Brands therefore need to earn visibility within ChatGPT's AI-powered search. 

Comparison with Google, Bing, Gemini and Copilot

More about alternatives in comparison: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and others

What does this mean for online shops?

1. Visibility comes from relevance, not simply budget
   Retailers with useful descriptions, meaningful advantages and recognisable brands are more likely to appear.
2. Recognisable brands have an advantage
   Visibility in AI search is increasingly a branding issue, not just a keyword game. See: Why AI visibility is about brand building, not just keywords
3. Structure your product data
   Retailers that provide structured product data through platforms, feeds or schema markup are better placed to be included. Branding in e-commerce: how to turn your shop into a brand
4. Bing optimisation becomes essential
   Because Bing supplies much of ChatGPT's web-search data, retailers also need a credible Bing SEO strategy. Bing SEO: New opportunity for website operators

Shopping is only the beginning

Similar developments can be seen in:

• News and researchChatGPT summarises news sources and links directly to them.
• Travel planningFlight and hotel bookings via Expedia & KAYAK
• EntertainmentFilm and television recommendations linked to streaming platforms
• Health and educationInitial guidance through an AI conversation

The chat interface is becoming a platform in its own right, not merely a tool. 

Read more: E-commerce trends: the future is AI-driven

Tracking becomes a black box: why AI visibility is hard to measure

As product discovery moves into ChatGPT, Bing Copilot and Google Gemini, conventional website analytics reaches its limits. Many interactions, recommendations and even purchase decisions now happen away from the retailer's website .

The biggest challenges:

• No click means no trafficPeople may receive all the guidance they need in the chat without visiting your site. That means: No conventional web session and no visible visit in Google Analytics, Matomo or another analytics platform.
• Broken attribution: When ChatGPT recommends a product but the customer buys directly several days later, the original influence may be impossible to trace. The conversion path disappears.
• No data on appearances within AI responses: OpenAI, Microsoft and Google provide little or no reporting on how often a product was displayed, recommended or selected.

What retailers need now

Zero-click interactions and chat-first discovery require new ways to assess visibility. Web analysis tools such as Trackboxx can help by focusing on what remains measurable:

• Privacy-friendly, cookieless web analytics
• Focus on Brand effects, direct traffic and changes in visibility over time
• Flexible goals and funnel tracking, even without a conventional click path

To evaluate performance in the age of AI, retailers need to look beyond page views and begin to measure behaviour, demand and brand impact together.

Conclusion: new rules create new opportunities

ChatGPT is reshaping product discovery through contextual recommendations rather than flashing adverts or conventional rankings. Retailers that learn how to become part of that conversation can build meaningful visibility without relying exclusively on Google Ads.