Unlike the more opaque marketplace-assistant mechanics covered in How AI Shopping Assistants Actually Source Product Data, both OpenAI and Perplexity have published concrete, actionable enrollment paths for their shopping surfaces. This playbook focuses on what you can actually do, not what you can only hope influences a black-box ranking.

Step 1: Confirm which inclusion path applies to you

If you're on Shopify: you likely already have automatic partial coverage through Shopify's direct integrations — OpenAI's documentation describes automatic inclusion via "Shopify Catalog," and Perplexity's own materials describe Shopify as one of its participating merchant sources. Automatic inclusion is not the same as guaranteed strong visibility — it means your catalog is in the pool being considered, not that it will be prominently surfaced.

If you're not on Shopify (custom-built site, a different platform): you need to actively apply. For ChatGPT, that means submitting a structured product feed through OpenAI's developer documentation for "direct feeds access" — this is a real, named application process, not a passive listing. For Perplexity, that means signing up for the free Perplexity Merchant Program, which OpenAI-equivalent-wise puts your catalog into Perplexity's product index and gives you a merchant dashboard.

Step 2: Get your feed genuinely complete, not just technically valid

Both platforms rank on factors that go beyond "is this product technically in the index." OpenAI's help documentation names availability, reviews, pricing, and user preferences as ranking inputs for what appears in a ChatGPT product carousel. That means a feed with correct but sparse data (a price and a generic title, nothing else) will lose out to a competitor's feed with complete descriptions, current availability, and visible review signal, even though both are technically "in" the system. See Structured Data and Feeds for AI Discovery for the specific attribute-level detail, much of which (Product Highlight, Q&A, Related Product fields) was built for exactly this kind of conversational surface.

Step 3: Decide whether Instant Checkout / Buy with Pro is worth the integration work

ChatGPT's Instant Checkout, built on the open-sourced Agentic Commerce Protocol, lets a shopper complete a purchase without leaving the chat. OpenAI has said merchants pay a small transaction fee on completed purchases; the fastest integration path is for merchants already using Stripe (OpenAI describes enabling agentic payments "in as little as one line of code" for those merchants), with a Stripe Shared Payment Token or the Delegated Payments Spec as alternatives for merchants on a different payment processor. At its 2025 launch this covered U.S. Etsy sellers, with named Shopify brands (Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, Vuori) announced as "coming soon" — confirm current eligibility and merchant coverage against OpenAI's own developer documentation before assuming your store qualifies, since CNBC reported OpenAI was still actively revising this feature as recently as March 2026.

Perplexity's Buy with Pro offers a comparable in-chat checkout for Perplexity Pro subscribers in the U.S., with free shipping and an automatic redirect to your own site when in-chat checkout isn't available for a given product. For merchants not ready to build a full checkout integration, the redirect fallback means Merchant Program enrollment (Step 1) still has value even without Buy with Pro specifically.

Step 4: Don't neglect the open-web-citation path

Perplexity, unlike ChatGPT's more feed-centric approach, is fundamentally built on live web search and citation — meaning a genuinely well-optimized, well-reviewed, clearly-written product or category page can plausibly still get cited in a Perplexity answer through its general web index, independent of Merchant Program enrollment. This isn't confirmed in detail by Perplexity's own documentation as a distinct ranking path, but it follows from how Perplexity is described to work more broadly (see GEO and AEO vs. Traditional SEO, Explained for why citation and traditional ranking aren't the same thing). Don't treat Merchant Program enrollment as the only lever available if you sell on Perplexity-relevant terms.

What's confirmed vs. what's third-party speculation in this playbook

Confirmed, platform-sourced in this guide: Shopify Catalog automatic inclusion for both platforms; the existence and free enrollment of the ChatGPT direct-feed-access application and the Perplexity Merchant Program; Instant Checkout's Stripe-based integration paths and stated merchant fee; Buy with Pro's US/Pro-subscriber scope and redirect fallback; ChatGPT's stated ranking factors (availability, reviews, pricing, preferences).

Not confirmed, and worth treating skeptically: any claim about the relative weight of those ranking factors, any claim about specific content wording or formatting "preferred" by either platform's model, and any claim that a paid third-party "GEO agency" service produces materially better results than doing the platform-native enrollment steps above yourself.

Common mistakes

  • Assuming Shopify's automatic partial coverage means no further action is needed — it puts you in the pool, it doesn't guarantee strong visibility without complete, high-quality feed data.
  • Building a full Instant Checkout or Buy with Pro integration before confirming current eligibility and merchant coverage, given both features have changed materially within the past year.
  • Enrolling in the Perplexity Merchant Program and then neglecting general on-page content quality, on the assumption that enrollment alone determines citation likelihood.
  • Paying for a "ChatGPT/Perplexity optimization" service that turns out to just be the free enrollment steps described in this playbook, repackaged.

Best practices

  • Confirm your actual current enrollment status on each platform directly (Shopify Catalog settings, OpenAI developer dashboard, Perplexity Merchant Program dashboard) rather than assuming coverage.
  • Prioritize feed completeness (availability, pricing accuracy, review signal) over speculative content-formatting tactics, since completeness is the one factor ChatGPT has explicitly confirmed matters.
  • Re-verify Instant Checkout / Buy with Pro eligibility and integration requirements before building anything, given how recently both have changed.
  • Keep investing in general on-page content quality for Perplexity specifically, since its web-search foundation means citation isn't gated entirely behind merchant enrollment.

FAQ

Do I have to choose between ChatGPT Shopping and Perplexity Shopping, or should I pursue both? Both, if you have the resources — the enrollment paths are separate but not mutually exclusive, and a Shopify merchant may already have partial automatic coverage on both simultaneously.

Is there a cost to any of the base enrollment steps? No — Shopify Catalog inclusion, the ChatGPT direct-feed-access application, and the Perplexity Merchant Program are all described as free to join. The only confirmed cost is OpenAI's stated small transaction fee on completed Instant Checkout purchases, paid by the merchant.

How do I know if this traffic is actually converting? This is the weakest link in the whole picture right now — see Measuring AI Assistant Referral Performance for the honest state of attribution tooling for AI-assistant-driven traffic and sales.