Short answers to the questions merchants ask us most. The same list is searchable from Support inside the app. If yours is not here, the chat and [email protected] are one click away.
Octolift is a Shopify app that scores how well each of your products can be found, understood and recommended by AI shopping assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini, and then shows you exactly what to change.
It runs inside your Shopify admin and reads your products through Shopify. Nothing is written to your store until you approve a specific change.
Read more: Overview
Answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) are the practice of preparing product listings so AI assistants and answer engines can quote and recommend them, in the way search engine optimization prepares pages for Google. Octolift measures that readiness per product and helps you improve it.
Read more: Overview
No. Scoring, the AI catalog checks, AI rankings and the agentic sales figures are all read only. A product is only updated when you press Save, or press Apply all suggestions and confirm, and only the fields that change is about are written. A store answer on the Knowledge base page is only saved once you approve it.
What you applied to a product is listed under Improvements on its row on the Products page, where most changes have an Undo button.
Read more: Improve with AI
Nothing is edited in your theme, and nothing is required. Scores, suggestions, visibility checks and agentic sales all work through Shopify's API on their own.
It asks them what they recommend, which is different from a fixed position. Each question you ask on the AI rankings page goes to ChatGPT and Gemini, and Octolift records the products they name and in what order, so you can see whether your store is among them and who wins if it is not.
What Octolift does not do is report a fixed position inside those assistants. A single API call answers differently from the consumer product, changes between runs and varies by country, so such a number would look precise while meaning nothing. Alongside the assistants it queries Shopify's global AI catalog, the catalog AI agents read through Shopify's agentic commerce tools, where a position is a real and repeatable thing.
Read more: AI visibility
Yes. Suggestions are written in the language of your existing listing, and the shopper questions used for ranking are written in the main language of the country being checked. The app interface itself is in English.
Press Analyze products on the Home page and choose a product. You get a score, a breakdown of what to fix, and how the product appears in the Shopify catalog that AI assistants read. What ChatGPT and Gemini answer to a shopper's question has its own page, AI rankings.
Then press Improve with AI on the analysis page to generate suggestions, review them, and save the ones you want. The Free plan is enough for a first round; change plan any time from Plan.
Read more: Getting started
Start with the products you most want AI assistants to recommend: bestsellers and the ones shoppers ask about. The Products page opens on Analyzed, every product with a score. Needs work narrows it to the weak and critical ones with nothing applied yet, weakest first, Improved shows what you have already changed, and All products lists the rest of your catalogue.
Yes. Press Analyze products and choose Select products, Select collections or All products. Before anything runs, the dialog shows how many products will be analyzed and how many your plan has room for. The products are then analyzed one by one in the background while you carry on, and a card on Home and Products shows the progress, with a Cancel button and the results when it is done.
Collections and All products take active products only: a draft or archived product is published nowhere, so there is nothing for an assistant to find.
Two reasons. A product your plan has no room for is skipped, and the dialog says how many before you start. And if this month's AI allowance runs out part way, the remaining products are skipped.
Read more: Plans and what they cover
Usually about ten seconds. The app fetches the product, runs the checks, has the AI rater score the text and asks the AI catalog whether the product is discoverable, all at the same time. The result is saved to your product list the moment it is ready, so if the page is slow to show it, or you leave it, nothing is lost: open the product again and the analysis is there. Suggestions take a little longer because each draft is scored and polished before you see it.
Yes. Anyone you give access to the app in your Shopify admin can use every feature, including applying changes. The plan belongs to the store, not to a person.
A score from 0 to 100 built from two halves. Listing quality covers what you write and structure: the description, title, category, category fields and variant attributes. Agent readiness covers what Shopify's AI catalog returns for the product: whether it is found at all, the core fields, variant prices, policy links, availability, media and reviews.
Each check is worth a fixed number of points. The score breakdown shows the points you earned on each one and what would earn the rest.
Read more: How scoring works
They are rating bands on the 0 to 100 score. Strong means the listing is well optimized, Good means solid visibility, Weak means it is missing key signals, and Critical means it needs attention. The thresholds are the same for every store and are listed on the How scoring works page.
Read more: How scoring works
One fixed model rates every store, and Octolift chooses it, so there is nothing to pick and nothing to tune. That is deliberate: scores are only comparable over time, between products and between stores if one rater produced them all. Measured on the same listings, different models disagree with each other by a wide margin.
We change the model when a better one earns its place, and that never changes a score you already have.
Read more: How scoring works
The agent readiness half comes from Shopify's AI catalog, which moves on its own: a product that just synced, went out of stock or gained reviews scores differently the next time it is analyzed. The text checks the AI judges are cached and only run again when the listing text changes.
A product's page opens on its last analysis, with the date it was taken, for as long as the product is unchanged. Press Reanalyze there for a fresh one.
Read more: How scoring works
Shopify's AI catalog did not return your product when Octolift searched for it in your store. Common reasons: the online store is password protected, the product is new or was just changed and has not synced yet, the product is not active, or it is not available in the checked market.
Confirm the storefront is public and the product is active, give Shopify some time to sync, then analyze again.
Read more: AI visibility
The app could not reach Shopify's AI catalog while analyzing, so the scan is incomplete: the agent readiness checks count as zero for that scan and the result is not saved, which means your product list keeps the last full score. This is a temporary problem on our side or Shopify's; press Reanalyze in a moment for the full score.
Read more: How scoring works
The check looks for the four policy pages Shopify exposes to AI agents: refund policy, shipping policy, privacy policy and terms of service. Points are proportional to how many of the four are published. Add the missing ones under Settings, then Policies, in your Shopify admin.
Read more: How scoring works
At least three images, each with alt text, earns full points. Fewer images, or images without alt text, earn half. A product with no images earns nothing. Alt text is edited on the product's media in the Shopify admin.
Read more: How scoring works
The check counts the reviews Shopify's AI catalog reports for the product, which are the reviews Shopify itself holds for it. Reviews that live only inside a third party app and never reach Shopify are invisible to the catalog, and so to AI agents.
Read more: How scoring works
Whether your variant option values are specific enough for an assistant to match a shopper's request. Navy and 42 are specific; Default Title, Option 1 or Style A are not. All values specific earns full points, at least half of them earns half, fewer earns nothing.
Read more: How scoring works
A rewritten description, an alternative title (occasionally more than one), values for the category fields that are still empty and, when the product has no category or the current one looks wrong, a category. Each suggestion appears next to what you have now. You pick what to use and can edit it before saving.
Read more: Improve with AI
It is instructed not to. A suggestion keeps every factual claim already in your listing and adds no materials, measurements, certifications or other facts that are not there. Category values are only picked when the title or description clearly supports them. Read a suggestion before applying it, as you would any copy.
Read more: Improve with AI
Only the fields you changed: the title, the description and the category fields you picked, saved together in one write that succeeds or fails as a whole; if one part cannot be written, the rest is put back and the product stays exactly as it was, and the message says so. A category you picked is written as a step of its own, in the same save. Nothing else on the product is touched.
Some category fields are saved in pairs (Color together with Pattern, for example), and a save with only half of a pair is stopped with a note. The description is saved as plain paragraphs, so a description that had custom HTML formatting loses that formatting when you replace it.
Read more: Improve with AI
Yes. On the Products page, press Improvements on the product's row: the latest changes are listed with the value before and after, each with an Undo button (Undo all appears when several can be undone). Undoing puts back the exact previous value, as long as you have not edited that field since. If you have, the undo is refused instead of overwriting your work.
A change that cannot be undone from the app says why, for example a category on a product that had none before; change those on the product in Shopify. Changes are kept for a month and then deleted.
Read more: Improve with AI
Press View activity on the Products page. The Activity page lists the last 30 days, newest first: each analysis with its score, each improvement you applied or undid, the shopper questions generated and each ranking check.
Yes, on its own. After a save Octolift analyzes the product again in the background, and the score on the page changes when the new result lands. If that fails, an Analyze again button appears.
Shopify's AI catalog can take a while to pick up a change, so the agent readiness half may follow a little later. Press Reanalyze on the product's page to check again.
Read more: Improve with AI
No. A product is counted against your plan the first time you analyze it, and everything after that is included: generating suggestions, regenerating them, applying changes, and applying more later.
Read more: Plans and what they cover
The points that check is expected to earn if you apply the suggestion, based on how the draft scored against the same rater that scores your product. The estimate at the top of the page adds them up. The real score after the next analysis can differ slightly, because the catalog checks are live.
Read more: Improve with AI
The summary Shopify's AI catalog has built for your product: unique selling points, top features, tech specs and attributes. Assistants quote from this, so a Not specified there is a gap worth filling in your description or category fields.
Read more: AI visibility
On the AI rankings page, press Generate questions under Questions shoppers may ask. Octolift writes search phrases a shopper might type for your products, from the title, product type and category, in the main language of the country being checked.
Press Check on a suggestion to ask it like a question you typed yourself: a live search of Shopify's AI catalog, where the top ten results are read to see where you rank and which product wins, plus what ChatGPT and Gemini answer.
Read more: AI visibility
Ranking mixes many signals: how complete the listing is, popularity, buyer engagement and brand recognition. Listing completeness is the part you can improve directly, so start with the score breakdown and Improve with AI. The rest builds over time.
Read more: AI visibility
The catalog answers per buyer country and shipping destination, and shoppers phrase things differently per market. Octolift checks one country at a time, defaulting to your home market. On the AI rankings page, pick a market in the Country dropdown beside the question field and press Check to ask the question there.
Read more: AI visibility
Every question you ask on the AI rankings page is checked and added to your list for that country, with where your store ranked in the Shopify catalog and what ChatGPT and Gemini answered. Your plan includes a number of questions. On a paid plan, the Check button on a question asks it again, once a week at most, and Check weekly does it for you; on the Free plan each question is checked once. The remove icon takes a question off the list, and its place comes back when your plan renews.
Read more: AI visibility
Yes. On the AI rankings page, type it in the question field and press Check. It runs the same live catalog search and asks ChatGPT and Gemini, then shows your rank, the winning product and each assistant's answer. The question is added to your list and uses one of the questions your plan includes; asking one that is already there uses nothing.
Read more: AI visibility
Every Shopify store has a public endpoint that AI assistants read to answer questions about the store itself: your shipping, your returns, how to reach you. Octolift asks that endpoint the ten questions shoppers ask most and shows you, word for word, what it says back.
Where it comes back with nothing, Octolift can draft an answer from your own refund and shipping policies, quoting the sentence each one came from. Nothing reaches your store until you approve it, and where your own pages do not answer a question, Octolift says so instead of making an answer up.
Read more: Knowledge base
Because your store answered that question with a FAQ written for a different one. Assistants match loosely: asked "do you offer free shipping", a store often answers with its list of shipping countries.
Sometimes that still serves the shopper and sometimes it does not. A list of the countries you ship to says nothing about whether shipping is free. Octolift will not guess which it is on your behalf, so the question stays Suggested until your store holds an answer written for it. Press Answer on the row to write one, or draft it from your own pages.
Read more: Knowledge base
In your own store, in the same place Shopify's Knowledge Base app keeps FAQs. They belong to your shop rather than to any app.
They are not shown on your storefront. There is no FAQ page or accordion: these answers are what AI assistants and Shopify's own agents read when a shopper asks about your store, so they only ever appear inside an assistant's answer.
Measured on a live store: uninstalling the Knowledge Base app leaves the answers in place and assistants keep reading them. Uninstalling Octolift would do the same. The answers you approve are yours.
Read more: Knowledge base
Because asking is the only way to measure. When Octolift checks what an assistant can answer about your store, it asks your store the same ten questions an assistant would, and Shopify logs those the way it logs any query. Testing your own question adds one more.
They are ours, not your shoppers'. If you are reading that log to learn what people ask, skip the runs of ten identical questions that arrive together.
Read more: Knowledge base
Orders that an AI assistant either placed for the shopper or referred to your store, as Shopify's own sales analytics attribute them. Octolift reads the totals from Shopify and shows the last 30 days on the Home page, and 7, 30 or 90 days for the whole store on the Agentic sales page (with visits, products and the orders themselves).
Read more: Agentic sales
The channels Shopify's sales data credits: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Shop. The By platform list on the Agentic sales page breaks the total down by channel.
Read more: Agentic sales
They use Shopify's last click attribution with direct visits left out, and are an estimate. AI assistants often open your store without a referrer, so some orders they bring show up as direct traffic and the real total is likely higher. The figures refresh about once an hour.
Read more: Agentic sales
Shopify requires three policies before a store can sell through an agent: your refund policy, your privacy policy and your terms of service. The Settings page lists them and says which are still empty, with a link straight to the page in Shopify where you write them. Once those three are written it also lists the ones worth having next, your shipping policy, contact information and legal notice.
Your products are a separate matter and Shopify handles it: eligible products are added to its AI catalog automatically. A product's own report tells you whether the catalog returned that product when we asked for it.
Read more: Agentic sales
Two things. Analyzing a product for the first time uses one of your plan's products: that product is then covered for good, and every later scan, suggestion and change to it is included. Asking a new question on the AI rankings page uses one of your plan's questions, and a removed question frees its place when your plan renews.
Everything else is included, such as checking your questions again on a paid plan, reading answers you have already collected, the AI catalog checks and your agentic sales. Deleting a product or undoing an improvement does not give its place back, because the work was done.
Read more: Plans and what they cover
The products you have already analyzed stay yours to work on, with nothing further to pay. To take on a product you have not analyzed before, move to a larger plan. The count is not monthly, so there is no renewal date to wait for.
Read more: Plans and what they cover
It comes off your product lists and the Home count within a day, and any question tracked for it is removed. Its place in your plan does not come back, because the AI work on it was done.
Read more: Plans and what they cover
Open Plan and press Change plan (See plans, before you have picked one). Shopify's own plan picker opens. Whatever you pick, you keep every product you have already analyzed; what changes is how many new ones you can add. To stop paying, pick the Free plan or uninstall the app. Billing is handled by Shopify and appears on your Shopify invoice.
Read more: Plans and what they cover
There is a Free plan you can stay on for as long as you like. If the paid plan you pick comes with a trial, the Plan page shows when the trial ends and when the first charge is taken.
Read more: Plans and what they cover
Applying a suggestion updates the product's title, description, category or category fields through Shopify, which needs the products write permission. Reading is covered by the same permission. It is only used when you press Save or Apply.
Read more: Data and privacy
The product's title, product type, category, category field values and description, plus, when the app tests how an assistant would answer a shopper, the AI catalog's summary of the product and text excerpts of up to three of your published policy pages (refund, shipping, privacy, terms of service). Customer data, orders and your access tokens are never sent to a model provider.
The providers are OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, depending on which model Octolift is running for that job. We use their paid API tiers, whose terms state that submitted content is not used to train their models.
Read more: Data and privacy
Access to your store is revoked immediately and all processing stops. Nothing you applied is reverted: the content is yours and stays exactly as it is. About 48 hours later Shopify asks us to erase your store's data and we delete your scores, change history, tracked questions, generated shopper questions and contact details.
Read more: Data and privacy
It never reads your customers. The only order data it uses is what Shopify's own analytics attributes to AI channels: the sales totals, and on the Agentic sales page the orders behind each product (order link, date, assistant and amount). Nothing about the shopper is read or stored.
Read more: Data and privacy
The addresses under Notification emails on the Settings page. Add or remove them there and press Save. With none listed, emails go to your store's own email address.
Press Reload app. That reloads Octolift inside the Shopify admin with a fresh session, which clears almost every transient error. If it keeps happening, open Support and start a chat, telling us the product you were on and what you pressed.
The AI rater did not return a complete verdict, and Octolift never shows a partial score as if it were final. Wait a moment and press Try again. If it persists for one product, contact support with the product name.
Read more: How scoring works
No. The score is saved the moment the analysis finishes, whether or not the page was still open to show it. Open the product again from Products and it opens on that analysis, with its date; while the analysis is still running, the product shows as analyzing on the Products list and the page waits for it instead of starting another. Only the first analysis of a product counts against your plan, so coming back costs nothing.
Read more: How scoring works
Your store has used the AI work its plan includes for the current billing period, so the work that asks a model (analyzing a product, AI suggestions, asking ChatGPT and Gemini your questions) is paused until the date shown in the message. On the Free plan, moving to a paid plan from Plan lifts it right away. On a paid plan it is a safety limit and not a plan limit: get in touch and we will look into it. Reading the scores and answers you have already collected keeps working.
Read more: Plans and what they cover
Octolift was updated with a permission it did not have when you installed it. Close the app, open it again from the Apps menu in your Shopify admin, accept the permission prompt Shopify shows, then save again.
Read more: Data and privacy
The save is all or nothing, so whenever one field cannot be written the message ends with Nothing was changed. It names the reason: a field that needs its partner too (Color with Pattern, for example: pick both and save again), a field set by a product option (Color when it is a variant option: edit the option in Shopify instead), a field Shopify does not accept on that category, or a field not set up on your store yet.
Fix the named field, or drop it from the picks, and save again. Everything else you picked is still in the form.
Read more: Improve with AI
Octolift limits how many AI generations and scans a store can run per minute and per day, to keep costs predictable and to stop runaway scripts. Wait a minute and try again. Normal use never reaches the daily limits.
Open Support in the app menu and press Chat with us. Include your store URL and the product you were looking at. If we are offline, leave your message in the chat and we will get back to you.
Open Support in the app menu to chat with us, or email [email protected]. Tell us your store URL and the product you were looking at and we will pick it up from there.
Install the app, analyze your first product, apply your first improvement and check where you rank in AI search.
The two halves of the AI visibility score, every check and its points, the rating bands, and when a product is scored again.
How many products each plan covers, what counts against that number and what a covered product includes, and the monthly AI ranking checks.