A

Discovery

HIGH

Products are machine-discoverable

Agents can reliably discover the store's products via a declared feed, platform catalog, typed sitemap, or content-verified crawl. Agents build their catalog from a feed or by crawling product pages; if neither yields products, your store is invisible.

What this check looks for

Scores the outcome of the product-discovery cascade. We try, in order: (1) a declared ACP/UCP feed, (2) a platform catalog API, (3) a typed sitemap (one that explicitly lists product URLs), (4) a content-verified crawl that confirms Product JSON-LD on each page. A pass means at least one of (1–3) yielded enough confident products (≥ MIN_CONFIDENT_PRODUCTS); a partial means only the crawl found them. Fail means neither path produced a reliable catalog — the store is effectively invisible to agents.

Which AI surfaces it affects

  • Google AI Mode (UCP)80
  • Microsoft Copilot60
  • ChatGPT (ACP)50
  • Meta AI50
  • Perplexity40

Weighted against the live specs — ACP 2026-04-17, UCP 2026-04-08.

How to fix it

Publish a product feed or a crawlable product sitemap

Shopify

Developer
  1. Google & YouTube channel app → sync your catalog to Google Merchant Center; that publishes a Google product feed automatically.
  2. If you need an ACP feed today, generate one at a stable URL via a Shopify app or the Storefront API and reference it from /llms.txt.

Platform docs ↗

BigCommerce

Developer
  1. Use BigCommerce's Google Shopping integration (Channel Manager → Google Shopping) to publish a Merchant Center feed.
  2. Reference the feed URL from /llms.txt and /.well-known/ucp.

WooCommerce

A few minutes
  1. Install Google Listings & Ads (or Yoast WooCommerce SEO).
  2. Configure the Merchant Center product feed; the plugin publishes it at a stable URL you can declare in /llms.txt.

Custom / headless

Developer
  1. Build a server-side endpoint that emits a Google Merchant Center XML feed at a stable public URL.
  2. Declare the feed URL in `/.well-known/ucp` (UCP storefront profile) and `/llms.txt`.
  3. Keep the feed fresh (rebuild on every product publish, or on a daily cron).
{
  "version": "2026-04-08",
  "storefront": {
    "name": "Acme Goods",
    "feeds": [
      {
        "format": "google_merchant_xml",
        "url": "https://example.com/feeds/google.xml",
        "updatedAt": "2026-05-28T00:00:00Z"
      }
    ]
  }
}

The spec it's pinned to

  • Google merchant listing — product feed delivery

    Google's merchant-listing documentation describes the product-feed and crawled-listing mechanisms by which catalogs reach Google Shopping and AI Overview. A declared feed is the most reliable channel.

  • sitemaps.org — XML sitemap discovery

    When no feed is declared, agents discover products by crawling URLs from the XML sitemap. The sitemaps.org protocol defines the format.

Google Merchant product feed ↗

Does your store pass this check?

Run the full audit — 82 checks across five AI shopping surfaces. Most tools only check whether you get mentioned; we check whether an agent can buy from you.

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