AEO for Ecommerce: The Product Schema Playbook for AI Shopping Citations

AI shopping is here. ChatGPT recommends specific products by name. Perplexity surfaces buyer-intent comparisons with citations. Google Shopping's AI overviews increasingly drive transactional queries. The brands cited in these answers are the ones who shipped the right Product schema stack months ago. Here's the ecommerce-specific AEO playbook.

What's the AEO playbook for ecommerce in 2026?

Ecommerce AEO rests on 4 pillars: (1) Product + Offer + AggregateRating + Review schema on every PDP; (2) named-author Article schema on buying guides and category pages; (3) FAQPage schema on collection pages and PDPs answering 'is X good for Y' style questions; (4) Organization + sameAs entity stacking so the brand is recognized across AI shopping engines. Sites with all four ship in 6–10× more AI shopping citations than sites without.

Product page schema (the non-negotiable stack)

Every PDP needs: Product (with name, image, description, brand, sku, gtin/mpn), Offer (price, priceCurrency, availability, url), AggregateRating (ratingValue, reviewCount), and a sample of Review (with author and reviewBody). Validate every template in Google's Rich Results Test. Inconsistent or invalid Product schema is the #1 reason ecommerce brands get filtered out of AI shopping citations.

Buying guides are your AEO content engine

'Best X for Y' guides are where ecommerce brands win or lose AI shopping prompts. For each priority category, ship one named-author guide with: 50-word quotable answer to the core question, comparison table of named products (yours and competitors'), specific use-case recommendations, FAQPage schema with 5 buyer questions, and Article schema with author Person schema. These pages get cited far more often than category pages alone.

Review handling that helps citations

AggregateRating schema based on actual on-site reviews is treated as authentic by AI engines. AggregateRating that doesn't match visible reviews on the page is penalised. Best practice: surface 5+ visible reviews above the fold with reviewer name and date, and mirror them exactly in Review schema. Fake or thin reviews get filtered fast and damage entity trust.

Category and collection pages

Category pages need a real intro (not just a wall of products) — 200+ words of named-author editorial above the product grid, with FAQPage schema answering 'what to look for in [category]', 'how to choose [category]', 'best [category] for [persona]'. This intro is what AI engines cite when answering category-level questions.

What kills ecommerce AEO

Stock product descriptions copied from manufacturer catalogues. Missing Offer.availability when items go out of stock. Faceted-navigation URL bloat with no canonical handling. Generic 'we have great products' homepage copy. Anonymous reviews. AI-generated buying guides. Each of these signals 'thin' to retrieval models and excludes you from citation pools.

90-day ecommerce AEO sprint

Month 1: Schema audit + rebuild Product/Offer/AggregateRating/Review across top 50 PDPs. Month 2: Write/refresh 5 buying guides with named author, FAQPage schema, comparison tables. Month 3: Build category page intros + Organization sameAs entity stack. Track ChatGPT and Perplexity citations on 30 buyer-intent prompts before and after.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does ChatGPT actually link to specific product URLs in shopping answers?

Yes, increasingly. As of 2026 ChatGPT's shopping experience includes inline product links with Buy buttons. Cited products almost always have full Product + Offer schema.

What about Google Merchant Center feeds?

Still important for paid Shopping and increasingly used by AI Overviews. Keep your feed clean and synchronized with on-page Product schema.

Should small ecommerce brands try this?

Yes — competition on niche category prompts is much lighter. A small brand with great schema and 5 honest buying guides can crack citations in their niche within 90 days.

How do I handle review schema for a new product with no reviews?

Don't ship AggregateRating until you have at least 5 real reviews. Ship Product + Offer alone; add AggregateRating once it's genuine.

Are AI engines penalising AI-generated product descriptions?

Yes, in practice. Pages with templated AI descriptions show measurably lower citation rates than pages with human-edited descriptions, even when content depth is similar.

What's the highest-leverage one-week project?

Add FAQPage schema with 5 real Q&As to your top 20 PDPs. Expect first citation lift within 30–60 days.