ChatGPT Shopping dramatically increased its reliance on product feeds for recommendations in July, significantly altering store visibility for U.S. merchants, according to new data from analytics firm Profound.
The share of feed-integrated product recommendations surged from 8.26 percent to 61.54 percent on July 10, based on Profound’s analysis of more than 1.7 million prompt runs during the month.
This shift led to a substantial reduction in visibility for many online stores, with 450 out of 687 tracked customers experiencing at least a one-third decrease in Shopping visibility between July 7-9 and July 10-12, Profound reported. Conversely, 67 merchants saw an increase of similar magnitude.
Profound attributed these changes largely to OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 release on July 9, although OpenAI’s official release notes did not confirm any shopping-related updates.
The transition to feed retrieval concentrated recommendations among a narrower selection of stores. The top 10 stores’ share of references climbed from 22.5 percent to 41.8 percent, and the number of unique merchants cited by ChatGPT Shopping dropped by more than 20 percent.
OpenAI’s Help Center states that ChatGPT utilizes structured product data from various providers and stores. Catalogs from e-commerce platforms Shopify and Etsy are already integrated, with other retailers currently on a waitlist for direct feed access.
OpenAI plans to launch a new self-serve platform later this year, which will enable stores to connect their product feeds independently, according to the company’s documentation.
Source: Search Engine Journal
