FAQ
Questions about SEO for AI search and shopping agents
Short answers for e-commerce teams. Where a number is involved, the source is linked.
What does AgentsCited do?
We help e-commerce brands get found, selected and cited by AI search and shopping agents, including Google AI Mode, ChatGPT Shopping and Perplexity. We do it through five services: a readiness audit, a product feed retainer, comparison content and digital PR, AI visibility reporting and Google update recovery.
Is optimizing for AI search different from SEO?
The foundations are the same: Google says a page must be indexed and snippet-eligible to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. What changes is emphasis: product feeds become a ranking input, earning a place on third-party lists matters more, and you measure citations, not just clicks.
Why are we getting fewer clicks from Google?
In a randomized study of 68,089 searches, AI Overviews cut outbound organic clicks by 39.8% on queries where they appeared, and zero-click searches rose to 73% from 54%. Sources: Agarwal & Sen, via seomadman; ecorpit.
Do we need llms.txt or special schema to appear in AI answers?
No. Google says there is no special schema and no AI text file needed for its AI features. We publish an llms.txt on this site as cheap housekeeping, not as a ranking lever, and we won’t sell it to you as one.
Which AI crawlers should our store allow?
For appearing in AI answers: Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User for ChatGPT, and PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User. Check CDN and firewall rules as well as robots.txt. Google-Extended only controls training use, not whether you appear in Google Search features.
Can we opt out of AI Overviews?
Yes. Search Console now has a toggle to opt out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI in Discover. Google says it is not a ranking signal elsewhere, but opting out means no traffic from those features.
Do you guarantee rankings or AI citations?
No. AI answers vary from one run to the next, so nobody can honestly guarantee a citation. We work on your odds and report share of citations over repeated runs.
How do you measure AI visibility?
With a frozen panel of buyer prompts run repeatedly on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode, reported as citation share and answer influence, alongside Search Console’s Generative AI report and revenue. The methodology page has the details and the limits.
Which e-commerce platforms do you work with?
The work is platform-agnostic: it depends on access to product data, templates and feeds. Shopify merchants are largely covered for ChatGPT Shopping through Shopify’s agentic channel, so for them we focus on data quality.
How much do your services cost?
Starting prices: readiness audit from $2,500; feed retainer from $2,000 a month; comparison content and digital PR from $4,000 a month; AI visibility reporting from $750 a month; update recovery from $3,000. Draft pricing: starting points, confirmed in a written quote after the mini-audit.
How do we get started?
Request the free AI-commerce mini-audit. We review your store’s public signals and tell you which service, if any, would help first.
See what AI shopping agents see when they look at your store.
Send your store URL. A person reviews the public signals AI engines rely on and replies with the gaps we would fix first. Free.