When a shopper asks Perplexity “what’s the best travel backpack under $200?”, it answers with product cards and cited sources — not ten blue links. Here is what Perplexity actually reads, and the concrete steps that make your products readable, verifiable, and worth citing.
No signup. The free check reads your public storefront the same way AI crawlers do.
Perplexity builds shopping answers from two supply lines, and you can influence both.
1. The open web. Perplexity’s crawler, PerplexityBot, indexes public pages so they can be surfaced and cited in answers. If your product pages are crawlable and carry clean structured data, they can be quoted and linked the same way a review site or a buying guide is.
2. Direct merchant feeds. Perplexity runs a Merchant Program (launched November 2024) where brands submit a product feed straight into its shopping index. It has been free to join, with in-chat checkout for eligible US shoppers handled through PayPal, per Shopify’s own guide to Perplexity Shopping. Shopify also states that Perplexity sources product data through integrations, including with Shopify itself.
What decides which products get picked? Shopify’s guide points to complete structured data (GTINs, MPNs, attributes), authentic customer reviews, human-readable descriptions, and accurate price and availability. Honest caveat: Perplexity does not publish its ranking formula, and this space is young — anyone promising guaranteed placement is guessing. What follows is what the published evidence supports.
Perplexity documents two user agents. They behave differently, and both matter for merchants.
| Agent | What it does | Respects robots.txt? |
|---|---|---|
PerplexityBot |
Indexes public pages so they can be surfaced and cited in search answers. Perplexity states it is not used to train AI models. | Yes, per Perplexity’s docs. Verified IPs are published at perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json. |
Perplexity-User |
Fetches a page live when a user’s question requires it — for example, checking your product page mid-answer. | Generally no — Perplexity says user-initiated fetches ignore robots.txt. |
Perplexity’s help center adds one nuance: if a page is disallowed, its content won’t be indexed, but domain-level information (like your site name) may still appear in results.
Open yourstore.com/robots.txt. Look for a User-agent: PerplexityBot block, and check whether a blanket User-agent: * rule disallows your product or collection pages. Some bot-blocking apps and CDN firewall rules block AI crawlers by default — if PerplexityBot can’t read your catalog, nothing else on this list matters.
Structured data is how a machine confirms what your page says: name, brand, GTIN/MPN, price, currency, availability, and review markup via Product and Offer schema. Shopify’s Perplexity guide lists complete structured product data as its first optimization step. Generate yours with our free product schema generator.
Perplexity composes answers, so pages that already answer the shopper’s question — who it’s for, what it’s made of, how it compares, what it won’t do — give it something quotable. Boilerplate manufacturer copy gives it nothing. Add an FAQ section with FAQ schema on key product pages.
Perplexity’s product cards summarize pros and cons drawn from what it reads, and Shopify’s guide names authentic customer reviews as a core input. Collect real reviews on your product pages with review schema, and where it fits your category, on third-party platforms Perplexity can also read. Never fabricate reviews — beyond the legal risk, an answer engine cross-checking sources is exactly the wrong place for inconsistent claims.
Apply on Perplexity’s merchant page, pass verification, and submit a product feed. Reported requirements are modest: a legitimate business shipping to US customers and a structured feed. This puts your live pricing and stock directly into Perplexity’s shopping index instead of relying on crawl freshness — and it’s the route to in-chat checkout.
An answer engine that recommends an out-of-stock product at the wrong price burns its own credibility, so stale data is a quiet disqualifier. Keep feeds and schema synced with reality, then run the free AI-visibility check to see how your store reads to AI crawlers today — and re-run it after each fix.
No. Perplexity’s product answers draw on the open web, and its Merchant Program has been free to join, with no listing fees or commissions reported. You cannot buy a recommendation — you can only make your products easier to read, verify, and cite.
Open yourstore.com/robots.txt and look for a PerplexityBot block or blanket disallows. Perplexity says PerplexityBot respects robots.txt. Our free check reads your robots.txt and reports whether the major AI crawlers, including PerplexityBot, are blocked.
Mostly, but not entirely. Perplexity says it won’t index content of disallowed pages, though domain-level information may still appear. And its Perplexity-User agent fetches pages on live user requests, generally ignoring robots.txt because the request is user-initiated.
Perplexity hasn’t published a timeline, and nobody outside the company can guarantee placement or predict timing. The honest play: make your store crawlable, ship complete schema, build real reviews, join the Merchant Program if eligible, and re-test periodically.
The free check scores your crawlability, product schema, and answer-readiness in about a minute — no signup. Publishing an llms.txt? Our free generator builds one from your catalog. And the Hatchloop app, launching on the Shopify App Store, will keep these fixes applied automatically.