The 9-Point AI Visibility Checklist for Shopify

AI shopping agents evaluate your store with zero patience and zero assumptions.

They expect clean structure, accurate data, and consistency.
If any of those break — you’re out.

Here’s a 9-point checklist every Shopify merchant should audit today.

1. Your robots.txt doesn’t block AI crawlers by accident

robots.txt is still a critical control file.

Common problems:

• Disallow: /collections/

• blanket Disallow: /

• duplicated rules added by apps

• blocks targeting common AI user agents

You don’t need to open everything — but you must avoid silent blocks.

2. You have an llms.txt file pointing to your best content

llms.txt is an emerging practice, similar to early robots.txt.

It helps AI systems:

• find meaningful content

• avoid blind crawling

• focus on revenue-driving pages

You can include:

• top categories

• best-selling products

• FAQs and evergreen guides

Low cost. High signal.

3. Every product has clean, non-conflicting structured data

Most stores accidentally output multiple Product schemas:

• theme schema

• SEO app schema

• review app schema

LLMs see conflicting truths — and lose trust.

You want:

• one canonical JSON-LD object per product

• accurate price, availability, SKU/GTIN

• no contradictory fields

4. Your product pages aren’t thin

LLMs don’t care about aesthetics — they care about clarity.

Thin content includes:

• vague lifestyle copy

• missing specs

• no sizing or materials

• no use-case context

AI answers sentence-level queries like:

“best breathable hoodie for tall men under €90”

If the signals aren’t there, you won’t be surfaced.

5. Prices and availability match everywhere

If:

• on-page schema says €59

• Shopify feed says €54

• Merchant Center says €62

You are treated as unreliable.

Consistency across:

• on-page schema

• Shopify feeds

• Merchant Center

• APIs

…is mandatory.

6. Reviews are machine-readable

LLMs summarize reviews when comparing products.

Your reviews must:

• exist as structured data

• not be locked in iframes

• be recent enough to matter

Reviews = trust.
Trust = visibility.

7. Policy pages are crawlable

AI agents compare merchants by:

• return windows

• shipping times

• warranties

If policies live inside modals, images, or JS-only widgets — they don’t exist.

Policies must be:

• text-based

• linked

• crawlable

8. Your store renders cleanly for bots

Watch out for:

• JS-dependent descriptions

• lazy-loaded product content

• broken mobile rendering

• render-blocking apps

Structured data must load reliably — even under partial rendering.

9. Brand and product entities are consistent across the web

Entity consistency affects trust.

Check:

• same brand name everywhere

• same product naming

• social profiles linked via Organization schema

• no mismatched descriptions

Clarity in → visibility out.

Final thought

If even one of these breaks, your store may be silently excluded from AI-driven discovery.

This checklist isn’t about optimization —
it’s about eligibility.