How to check whether ChatGPT recommends your store and find your gap before Black Friday

Tom Goodwin, who writes about agentic commerce on LinkedIn, posted on October 30, 2026:

"You can dominate Google and never appear in ChatGPT."

The gap just got costlier to ignore. Jason Saltzman, Head of Research & Insights at AirOps, wrote that before a format change in mid-October 2026, almost none of ChatGPT's shopping answers pointed to a store. Now about half do, with a "Shop at," "View at" or "available at" line inside the answer.

Why check before Black Friday

Enrico Glover, who calls himself a Chief AI Officer, cites Adobe's 2026 holiday forecast: AI referral traffic to US retail sites should grow 130% over the season and 95% on Black Friday.

Glover adds that "AI visibility gets you into consideration." A mention puts you on the shopper's shortlist. The shopper still has to pick you.

A commenter under Goodwin's post goes further: it's too early to call AI visibility the new SEO, and brands should first see whether recommendations turn into customers and revenue. That doubt is reasonable, and the test below doesn't depend on settling it. It takes one product and about ten minutes (our estimate).

Run the test on one product

Goodwin's advice is to start with one product.

1. Pick the product you plan to push in the sale.
2. Search Google for it with the phrase a shopper would use. That's usually not your product name. Note where your page ranks.
3. Ask ChatGPT to recommend something in the same category. Ask like a shopper: who it's for, what it must do. Leave your brand name out.
4. Write down who gets named, and which store the answer links to, if any. Look for the "Shop at" or "View at" line.
5. Compare the two results. If you appear in both, there's nothing to close. If you appear only on Google, that gap is your next job.

Find your gap

Goodwin lists six things an AI looks for when a shopper asks ChatGPT or Gemini what to buy. Ask each one as a yes/no question about the page you just tested:

• AI crawler access. Can GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot get into your store?
• Product attributes. Does the page state size, colour, material, fit and use case in plain words?
• Answer-first content. Do your FAQs match how shoppers phrase their questions?
• Review velocity. Are your reviews recent and steady, or an old pile?
• Off-site trust. Do people review you on Trustpilot, REVIEWS.io or Reddit?
• Accurate everywhere. Are price, stock and details the same on every platform you sell on?

Simplified illustration: where each of the six fixes lives.

Your Google work still counts. Goodwin calls the classic e-commerce SEO checklist the base layer: crawlable pages, a clean product feed, structured data, strong collection pages, a fast site, seller ratings. He says SEO and AI search feed each other. Clean product data helps you rank and AI reads it too, and the reviews that earn Shopping stars are also the proof AI looks for.

Treat the six questions as a way to locate your gap.

Fix it before the sale, or after?

Your test result decides.

• ChatGPT already names you. Keep your Black Friday plan and re-run the test afterwards.
• It names another shop, and the gap is on the page. Think vague attributes, or FAQs that skip shoppers' questions. You control these edits, so do them before the sale if your calendar allows.
• The gap is off the page. That means crawler access, off-site reviews, or details that differ across platforms. Check crawler access first, because AI can't use a page it can't reach. Log the other two for after the sale.

A commenter under Goodwin's post noted that shoppers still need a reason to choose you. One under Glover's post pointed at the click itself: a shopper arrives from an AI assistant with a very specific question and lands on a generic page.

Key takeaway: your product page has to answer the problem the shopper just asked the AI about.

Share your result

Run the test on one product and tell us in the comments:

• what you tested
• where Google put you
• who ChatGPT named
• which of the six boxes your gap fell into

If you got named, say what you think did it.

Sources

• posted on October 30, 2026 · linkedin.com
• wrote · linkedin.com
• cites Adobe's 2026 holiday forecast · linkedin.com