Google’s John Mueller re-posted the results of an experiment that tested if ecommerce sites were accessible by AI Agents, commenting that it may be useful to check if your ecommerce site works for AI agents that are shopping on behalf of actual customers.
AI Agent Experiment On Ecommerce Sites
Malte Polzin posted commentary on LinkedIn on an experiment he did to test if the top 50 Swiss ecommerce sites were open for business for users who are shopping online with ChatGPT agents.
They reported that most of the ecommerce stores were accessible to ChatGPT’s AI agent but he also found some stores were not for a few reasons.
Reasons Why ChatGPT’s AI Agent Couldn’t Shop
- CAPTCHA prevented ChatGPT’s AI agent from shopping
- Blocked by Cloudflare’s Turnstile tool that’s a CAPTCHA alternative.
- Store blocked access with a maintenance page
- Bot defense blocked access
Google’s John Mueller Offers Advice
Google’s John Mueller recommended checking if your ecommerce store is open for business to shoppers who use AI agents. It may become more commonplace that users employ agentic search for online shopping.
He wrote:
“Pro tip: check your ecommerce site to see if it works for shoppers using the common agents. (Or, if you’d prefer they go elsewhere because you have too much business, maybe don’t.)
Bot-detection sometimes triggers on users with agents, and it can be annoying for them to get through. (Insert philosophical discussion on whether agents are more like bots or more like users, and whether it makes more sense to differentiate by actions rather than user-agent.)”
Should SEOs Add Agentic AI Testing To Site Audits?
SEOs want to consider adding Agentic AI accessibility to their site audits for ecommerce sites. There may be other use cases where an AI agent may need access to filling out forms, for example on a local services website.