Product feeds for ChatGPT and Perplexity shopping: what they need and how to send one

A shopper asks ChatGPT which trail running shoes under $100 grip best on wet rock. A short list of products comes back, each with a link to a store. The same question in Perplexity gets a list of its own.

Your products can only make those lists if the assistant has your product data, and if that data answers the question. Here is what ChatGPT and Perplexity read, how to send them a feed, and what to fix first when your products don’t show.

Three ways your products reach an AI answer

Neither assistant browses your store the way a shopper does. They work from product data, and it reaches them three ways.

• A feed you send them. OpenAI and Perplexity each run a merchant program that takes a product feed directly. This is the only route that needs an application.
• Your Google Shopping listings. ChatGPT’s shopping answers draw heavily on them. That works worldwide today, with no application.
• Your product pages. ChatGPT reads public product pages too, and Perplexity’s crawler, PerplexityBot, reads them directly.

The feed gives you the most say over what they get. The other two work whether you send a feed or not.

What a ChatGPT shopping feed needs

OpenAI has its own feed layout with its own field names. A Google Shopping feed is close, but it is not the same file.

• OpenAI’s field names. item_id, title, description, brand, url, image_url, price, availability and the rest of its field set.
• is_eligible_search set to true on every product. OpenAI requires it. It marks the product as eligible for ChatGPT’s shopping search.
• Who is selling. seller_name and seller_url, your store’s name and web address.
• A flat file. Tab- or comma-separated text, optionally gzipped. ChatGPT does not read XML. A gzipped TSV is the safe choice.

Then the part most people miss. OpenAI does not fetch a feed URL. The file is pushed to it. Once your store is approved, OpenAI gives you SFTP login details, and your feed tool uploads the file there on every update. Without those details, a finished feed goes nowhere.

The product link matters more than it used to. OpenAI discontinued checkout inside ChatGPT in March 2026, so shopping answers send the shopper to your store. Every URL in the feed has to land on the right product page.

Planning ChatGPT ads as well? Product-feed ad campaigns are a beta in OpenAI’s Ads Manager. One extra field, is_ads_eligible, marks which products may run in them.

What a Perplexity shopping feed needs

Good news first. Perplexity publishes no feed specification of its own. It reads Google’s. If you already send Google Shopping a feed, you have most of a Perplexity feed.

That means the Google Shopping columns under Google’s names. id, title, description, link, image_link, availability and price, plus sale_price, brand, condition, gtin, mpn, item_group_id and the category fields. XML, CSV and TSV all work.

Perplexity takes the feed two ways. It can fetch it from a feed URL, or you push it by SFTP with login details Perplexity gives you during onboarding.

Skip the custom labels. They exist to split ad campaigns, and Perplexity has none. It tested sponsored placements, then dropped advertising altogether. Its shopping answers are organic, and there is nothing to bid on.

On Shopify? You may already be covered. Shopify Catalog passes a Shopify store’s product data to connected AI platforms, Perplexity among them. A feed of your own adds control over which fields go out, what the titles say and how sold-out products are marked.

Why aren’t my products showing in Perplexity or ChatGPT?

Whether you are listed, and what an answer shows, is OpenAI’s and Perplexity’s call. No one can buy or promise a spot. What you control is below, in the order to check it.

1. You haven’t joined the merchant program. A finished feed is not an enrollment. Both programs are applications you make. OpenAI’s is at chatgpt.com/merchants. Perplexity’s is on its own site and includes a business verification. Both are US-first as of mid-2026, so check the current terms before you plan around them.
2. The barcode is missing. An AI answer has to work out that your listing and another shop’s are the same product. The gtin is the field that settles it. If a quarter of your catalog has no barcode, that quarter is hard to match.
3. The crawler is locked out. Check that your robots.txt lets PerplexityBot in, and that product pages carry schema.org Product and Offer markup. This lives on your store, not in your feed, so raise it with whoever runs your site. Outside the US, or before you are approved, it is the only way into Perplexity.
4. ChatGPT never got the file. If the SFTP details are missing or wrong, OpenAI has nothing to read. Check the last delivery, not the last export.
5. The data doesn’t answer the question. Shoppers ask AI in full sentences. Waterproof, wide fit, under $100. A one-line description that repeats the title gives an assistant nothing to match that against. Put in the facts a shopper asks about: material, fit, use, care.
6. Your Google feed is weak. ChatGPT leans on Google Shopping listings, so disapproved or thin Google products are gaps there too.

Start with the feed that works everywhere

If you can fix only one feed this week, fix the Google one. ChatGPT draws heavily on Google Shopping listings, worldwide and with no application. Perplexity reads Google’s format. And Google’s own AI shopping features read the same Merchant Center feed.

Google also has fields built for answers. product_highlight for short benefit lines, product_detail for specs as name and value pairs, and question_and_answer for the questions your support inbox already gets. Those are Google’s. ChatGPT and Perplexity read the ordinary product fields, which is why a full, factual description matters most.

Send all three from one catalog

Renable is the marketing platform that sits between your store and every channel, with an AI agent inside. It imports the feed your store already exports, or your Merchant Center, a Meta catalog, a Google Sheet or a file, and re-reads a feed URL every hour. ChatGPT and Perplexity are two of its twelve prebuilt channels, next to Google.

• ChatGPT, in OpenAI’s layout. The channel starts with OpenAI’s field names, is_eligible_search set to true and a gzipped TSV. Paste in OpenAI’s SFTP details, test the login, and the file is pushed on every update. Until the details are in, the channel tells you it has nowhere to deliver.
• Perplexity, in Google’s layout. The channel starts with the Google Shopping columns, at a feed URL Perplexity can fetch or pushed by SFTP. Sold-out products go out as out of stock, and a sale price only appears when a product is really discounted.
• Gaps you can see. Each channel’s Fields tab shows every required field and how many products fill it. On Perplexity, Renable marks gtin as required, so a catalog short on barcodes gets a warning on the channel.
• Descriptions that answer questions. Publish a description prompt once and it writes a description for every product it applies to, from that product’s own details. It keeps going as new products arrive and old ones change.

Or say it in a sentence. Aimée, the AI agent inside Renable, drafts both channels. Nothing goes out until you publish.

The setup details are in the help center: The ChatGPT shopping feed and The Perplexity shopping feed. Get ready for AI shopping

No feed yet? Start here: How to export a product feed from Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and BigCommerce