The AI JSON Feed feature is forward-looking. To understand why it matters, you need to understand how AI is fundamentally changing the way people search — and therefore how businesses need to present their information online.
How AI is Changing Search
For decades, search worked the same way: type keywords, get a list of blue links, click through. This model is being disrupted by AI-powered search experiences that provide direct answers.
- Google AI Overview — AI-generated summaries appear at the top of search results. These draw from indexed web content. Well-structured product pages may be cited as sources.
- Bing Copilot — Microsoft’s Bing integrates an AI assistant that answers shopping questions directly, citing specific products and prices from indexed web data.
- Perplexity AI — An AI search engine that actively crawls websites. It has its own crawler (PerplexityBot) that consumes structured data to compose factual answers.
- ChatGPT Search — OpenAI’s ChatGPT searches the web in real time using Bing as a data source. Product mentions in Bing-indexed pages may surface in ChatGPT answers.
- AI Shopping Agents — Specialised AI agents and price comparison engines are increasingly parsing product feeds directly rather than scraping HTML pages.
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO (also called Generative Engine Optimisation / GEO) is the practice of structuring your content so that AI systems — not just traditional crawlers — can accurately understand and represent your business.
Key principles:
| Principle | What It Means for Your Store |
|---|---|
| Structured data | Provide machine-readable product data in a clean, consistent format. The AI feed does exactly this. |
| Entity clarity | AI systems work with entities (products, brands, attributes). Clear product names and descriptions help. |
| Freshness signals | AI search prioritises recent, up-to-date content. IndexNow and fresh sitemaps signal currency. |
| Rich context | Including category hierarchy, brand, price, and stock status gives AI full context to accurately surface your products. |
| Canonical URLs | AI crawlers follow the same canonical URL principles as traditional crawlers. |
XML Sitemap vs. AI Feed — What’s the Difference?
| XML Sitemap | AI JSON Feed | |
|---|---|---|
| Contains | URLs + last-modified + priority | Full product data: name, description, price, category, stock |
| Format | XML | JSON (easier for AI to parse) |
| Primary audience | Traditional search crawlers | AI search engines, LLMs, price comparison platforms |
| Answers the question | “Does this site have pages about X?” | “What does this store sell? What are the prices? Is it in stock?” |
Why the AI Feed Matters — Real-World Benefits
Faster AI citation When Perplexity, Bing Copilot, or other AI search engines crawl your AI feed, they build an accurate representation of your catalog without having to parse every HTML product page individually.
Price accuracy in AI answers AI systems that answer “where can I buy [product] under $50?” need structured price data. Your AI feed provides this directly.
Category context The category_hierarchy field tells AI systems not just what a product is called, but where it fits — e.g., ["Electronics", "Headphones", "Over-Ear", "Noise Cancelling"]. This dramatically improves how AI systems categorise and surface your products.
Inventory status AI shopping assistants increasingly check stock status. The stock_status field makes your real-time inventory visible to AI crawlers.
Importance signalling The importance_score field (when Smart SEO Mode is enabled) tells AI crawlers which of your products are most significant — helping them prioritise what to surface in answers.
How to Maximise AI Feed Effectiveness
- Enable the AI feed and add the index URL to both
robots.txtand your Custom Links sitemap - Enable Smart SEO Mode so the
importance_scorereflects real sales data - Write clean product descriptions — the first 320 characters are what AI crawlers see. Make them factual, descriptive prose, not keyword-stuffed HTML
- Keep prices and stock status updated in OpenCart — the AI feed reflects live data
- Enable AI feed file cache to ensure fast response times. Slow feeds may be crawled less frequently
- Submit your store to AI shopping platforms directly, providing your AI feed index URL as the data source
The Bigger Picture
The shift to AI-mediated search is not a distant future — it is happening now. Stores that provide structured, machine-readable product data will be better represented in AI search answers. Stores that only publish information inside HTML pages designed for humans will be harder for AI systems to parse accurately.
The AI JSON Feed is how you make your store legible to the next generation of search.