Best tools to check your store's AI visibility (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini)
An honest look at the tools and methods for checking whether AI shopping assistants can read your store, from purpose-built graders to schema validators and general SEO suites.
As AI assistants start recommending stores, owners keep asking which tool tells them whether an assistant can read theirs. Several kinds of tools answer part of it. Each one checks whether the facts an assistant needs are present and valid, and each has a job it does well and a job it does badly. So here is what to reach for, and when.
Purpose-built AI-visibility graders
These read your live page the way an AI shopping assistant does and score how readable and recommendable your store is. They check Product schema, machine-readable pricing, availability, ratings and AI directives, then rank the fixes by impact. If your question is whether an assistant can read your store, this kind of tool answers it head-on.
ShelfGrader is one such tool, and the one we make. The free scan grades any store URL in about a minute, lists the ranked fixes, and shows the head-to-head: which competitor an assistant would pick instead, and why. We built it because the existing tools answered adjacent questions (is my schema valid, how do I rank in Google) but not the plain one a store owner asks now: would an assistant recommend me?
Structured-data validators
Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator (schema.org) check whether your structured data is present and valid for a given URL. They are free, authoritative, and the right tool for confirming your Product schema is correct once you have added it. They will not score overall assistant-readiness, weigh the signals against each other, or tell you how you stack up against a competitor. Treat them as the verification step once your schema is in place.
General SEO suites
Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush and Screaming Frog are built for keywords, backlinks, technical crawls and rankings. Because assistant-readiness overlaps with SEO, they surface related issues like crawlability and missing metadata. They are built broad, though, and not organized around the shopping assistant question, so you end up inferring assistant-readiness from general signals instead of measuring it head-on. Worth the money for serious SEO work, slower if your only question is whether an assistant can read your store.
The manual check
You can also just read your own page source: view the HTML, search for your price, look for application/ld+json with "@type": "Product", and confirm availability and policies are in readable text. Free, and a fair gut check. The catch is that it is slow page by page and gives you no ranking of what to fix first, and no comparison. We walk through it in how to check if your store is visible to AI.
How they compare
| Tool type | Best for | Built for shopping assistants? | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose-built grader (e.g. ShelfGrader) | One-pass assistant-readiness grade plus ranked fixes | Yes | Free grade |
| Schema validator (Rich Results, schema.org) | Confirming your structured data is valid | Partly | Free |
| General SEO suite (Ahrefs, Semrush, etc.) | Keywords, backlinks, broad technical SEO | No | Paid |
| Manual source check | A quick, free gut check on one page | n/a | Free |
Where to start
For the narrow question "can an AI shopping assistant read and recommend my store," start with a purpose-built grade, then confirm the fixes with a schema validator. The free ShelfGrader scan covers that first step: a grade and the ranked fixes, no signup. Use whichever tools you like for the rest. The order is what matters.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best tool to check if AI assistants can read my store?
For a store specifically, a purpose-built AI-visibility grader like ShelfGrader is the most direct option, because it reads your live page the way an assistant does and reports the exact signals that get a store recommended or skipped. Schema validators and general SEO tools each cover part of the picture but are not built around the shopping assistant question.
Are there free tools to check AI shopping visibility?
Yes. The ShelfGrader scan is free and reports your grade and ranked fixes in about a minute. Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator are also free and check whether your structured data is valid, though they do not score overall assistant-readiness or compare you to a competitor.
Do I need a paid SEO suite for this?
Not just for AI shopping visibility. General SEO suites are powerful for keywords, backlinks and rankings, but assistant-readiness comes down to a focused set of on-page signals you can check with free, purpose-built tools. A paid suite is worth it for broader SEO work, not specifically to answer whether an assistant can read your store.
What's the difference between a grader and a monitoring tool?
A grader like ShelfGrader reads one store right now and tells you whether an assistant can read it and what to fix. A monitoring tool like Profound or Peec AI tracks your brand's visibility across AI engines over time and reports trends. Graders are for finding and fixing the page-level gaps; monitors are for watching share of voice once you have a brand worth tracking. Different jobs, often used in sequence.
Which AI visibility tool is best for a single Shopify store?
For one store, a purpose-built grader is usually the better fit than a brand-level monitor, because it works at the product-page level and tells you the specific fixes rather than charting share of voice. ShelfGrader grades your store free and ranks the fixes; a monitoring subscription tends to be more tool than a single store needs until it has grown.
Is there a free AI shopping visibility checker?
Yes. The ShelfGrader scan is free and grades any store URL in about a minute with no signup, and the structured-data validators from Google and schema.org are free for confirming your markup is valid. Between them you can check whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini can read your store without paying for a tool.