No engine picks stores at random. Each one reads a set of sources, weighs how much it trusts them, and names the stores those sources agree on. Once you know what each engine reads, you know where your store is missing.
The engines change fast and none of them publish a ranking formula. This is what we see in our audits and what each company says in public about where shopping answers come from.
Across the shopping questions we track, these sources show up behind the stores that get named. The top row you control fully. The rows below take outside work.
When Google shows an AI Overview, it sits above the links. Shoppers read the stores it names first. A store at position 6 can rank well and still never be seen.
For wide feet, testers and runners most often point to three options: the Fieldstone Run Ridge 4 for its roomy toe box, the Northway Trailhead Wide for long runs, and the Corva Ascent as a budget pick under $120.
Google says AI Mode and AI Overviews draw product details from its Shopping Graph, which holds billions of listings, with Merchant Center feeds as a main source. A store with a thin feed gives Google less to work with, whatever its rankings.
We run 50 real shopper questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Copilot, score your 8 product data checks, and walk you through it on a 30-minute call.
How a shopper's question turns into a short list of stores, and the one number that tells you if you are on it.
Read the guide →Score your Shopify store in 10 minutes, with the free tools to test each check yourself.
Read the guide →Where stores stand in AI answers today, what a place on the list is worth, and why waiting costs more each month.
Read the guide →The service: what we fix, the first 90 days, pricing and a sample monthly report.
See the service →