Every store now has an AI agent policy. The only question is whether someone chose it.
In late September, Amazon blocked Meta's Muse agent from shopping on Amazon.com. According to Amazon, as reported by SiliconAngle, one of its reasons was that Muse doesn't identify itself as an agent when making purchases, which Amazon says its terms require. Shopify, separately, says Meta's direct checkout is active by default for eligible Shopify stores, and that Shop Pay can appear as a checkout option in Muse when available. Amazon set a condition for agents shopping its own store. Shopify set a default that each of its merchants can review. Make sure your store's setting is one someone chose.
Decide per class of agent
| Class | What it does | Examples | Your call |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search and retrieval crawlers | Fetch pages so AI answers can cite and link them | OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot (blocking Googlebot removes you from Google Search, AI Overviews included) | Usually welcome; OpenAI says blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of ChatGPT search answers |
| User-triggered agents | Act for one person in the moment: browse, compare, cart | ChatGPT agent, agents such as Meta's Muse | Welcome, verify, or block, by path |
| Training crawlers | Collect content to train models | GPTBot; Google-Extended, which is a robots.txt token rather than a crawler, also governs grounding in Gemini Apps, and can't be blocked at the CDN | A separate decision from the two above |
You can split by path as well: product and policy pages open to verified agents; cart and checkout under your normal bot and fraud checks. Verify means checking a visitor against what its operator publishes, such as IP ranges or a signature, not the name it sends. Your CDN or bot vendor may already do this; ask which agents it lists as verified.
Make three layers agree
- robots.txt states your policy to crawlers that declare themselves. It is voluntary, and OpenAI's crawler documentation notes that robots.txt rules may not apply to ChatGPT-User, because those visits are started by a person. On Shopify, robots.txt is edited through a robots.txt.liquid theme template. Shopify calls this an unsupported customization that can cost you all traffic if done wrong. Have your agency make the change, keep Shopify's default rules in place, and save a copy of the current file first. The default file blocks cart and checkout paths for all crawlers; that's expected.
- Your CDN or bot management enforces it. Check the defaults: search your CDN or bot logs for OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Googlebot over the last 30 days and see whether any were challenged, rate limited or blocked. When you welcome a crawler, allow it as a verified bot, not by its user-agent name. When you block a group such as AI training, check which crawlers it includes and whether any also serve search.
- Your terms of service set the conditions. Amazon says its terms require agents to identify themselves.
Treat names as claims
A user-agent string is text any client can send. Check each claimed agent against the IP ranges or keys its operator publishes, and record anything that doesn't match as unverified. Signed requests are the emerging fix. Under Web Bot Auth, an agent signs each request and publishes its key. Cloudflare's docs say signed agents in its directory are now Verified, under a taxonomy it introduced July 1, 2026.
Settle the terms for agent orders
Forter already reports agent orders across its network. Questions to answer:
- Does your return and cancellation policy cover an order an agent placed for a customer?
- What may a guest agent read, and what needs the customer signed in? The Personal Agent Protocol, proposed October 6 by Sierra, includes both guest and signed-in sessions. According to Unite.AI, it is being developed with Meta and industry partners including Shopify, Stripe and Walmart.
- Who carries the cost of an agent's mistake? American Express announced Amex Agent Purchase Protection in April, a future commitment covering eligible Card Members for charges caused by errors from registered AI agents. A Yahoo Finance report quotes the October 6 playbook as aiming to protect eligible Card Members and merchants. Amex says terms and conditions will apply; neither source includes them. Ask your payment provider what it covers.
Next in Navigations: AEO and GEO, and what Google and OpenAI actually ask of you.
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