AI is shaping Black Friday shortlists. Will your products make the cut?

Maddie Weatherill

October 16, 2026

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6 minutes

Search & Discovery

Campaign Strategy

Customer Experience

Before shoppers see your Black Friday offer, AI decides whether it’s worth showing them. Here’s how to make sure your products are.

At a glance

AI tools now research, compare and shortlist products on your shoppers’ behalf. Adobe expects AI traffic to US retail sites to rise by 130% this holiday season, so if an AI tool can’t understand your product, it won’t get recommended, no matter how good your offer is.

But you don’t need to overhaul your whole catalogue before Black Friday 2026. Pick your most important products for peak, and start checking that their product information, landing pages and reviews tell the same clear story now, not when your sale goes live.

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You’ve lined up the stock, signed off the offers and given the countdown timer its annual workout. But your next customer could skip the homepage you’ve spent weeks preparing.

AI assistants can research products, compare options and send shoppers straight to your store. By the time someone reaches a product page, an assistant could have already read its information and decided if it’s worth recommending.

You could have the best offers, the smartest campaigns and a store built to convert. But none of it gets a chance if your product never makes the shortlist.

You don’t need to master every new AI platform to get ahead of this. You just need to know what helps your products get considered and where you can make a difference.

The shopper hasn’t disappeared. They’re just taking a different route to you.

You’re still selling to people. The difference is that shoppers can now hand part of their research to an AI assistant.

Adobe forecasts AI traffic to US retail sites will rise 130% year on year during the 2026 holiday season. That means people clicking through from AI-powered services, not bots crawling websites. And these visits are worth paying attention to. During last year’s holiday season, AI traffic converted at a rate 31% higher than other traffic sources, according to Adobe.

This isn’t just another place to advertise, but another place where people decide which products deserve their attention, often before they even reach your store. That means your Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) plan needs to do more than drive traffic. It needs to help your products get considered in the first place.

AI needs to get it. Then shoppers need to want it.

Here’s a simple way to think about AI-driven discovery: your product information needs to work for two audiences. The first is the AI assistant helping someone find the right product. The second is the shopper deciding whether to buy it.

That changes what being findable means. It’s no longer about “Can someone find this product in my store?” It’s about asking “Can an AI retrieve and accurately describe this product when someone asks for something like it?”

And AI doesn’t just look at your website. OpenAI explains that ChatGPT shopping results consider product information from first and third-party sources and can use publicly available reviews. So accurate product data matters. But so does making sure the wider information around your products supports what you’re promising.

You can’t control every AI recommendation. But you can make sure the information you provide is clear, accurate and useful.

How to get your products recommended by AI before Black Friday

The good news is this isn’t a catalogue-wide rescue mission. You just need to know where to focus, what to improve and what’s changing.

1. Put your bestsellers in the spotlight

“Get the catalogue AI-ready” is a big job with no obvious finishing line. “Get our ten most important Black Friday products ready” gives you somewhere to start.

Look at the products you’re promoting, your seasonal bestsellers and the ranges you’re investing most heavily in. These are the products worth checking first.

It’s also important to get ahead of launching your discounts. Microsoft’s analysis of last season’s holiday shopping journeys found an average conversion journey of 52 days, with 56% of November conversions starting with a first click in October.

But don’t confuse your sale’s launch date with the start of the decision. The products you’re counting on need to be ready while shoppers are still researching.

2. Check the journey from AI recommendation to purchase

For those priority products, you need to know whether AI can understand what you’re selling and whether the shopper’s experience backs up the recommendation.

Focus on three things:

Product information and product data: Are your product titles, descriptions, categories, tags and key details (such as size, colour, material and compatibility) accurate and complete, so AI shopping assistants like ChatGPT can understand them? Can each product be described using specific facts rather than broad claims?
The product page experience: If someone clicks through from an AI recommendation straight to the product page, can they quickly understand why it’s right for them? Can they find the price, delivery times, returns policy and sizing they need to decide?
Reviews and third-party listings: Do your customer reviews and third-party listings like Google Shopping support what you’re promising? Are there unanswered questions or inconsistencies worth addressing?

This isn’t about becoming a technical expert or trying to control what AI says about your products. It’s about spotting the gaps, making sure AI has the right information to work with, and giving people the confidence to buy.

Checking product information by hand, even for ten products, takes time most teams don’t have this close to peak. That’s where Clearer’s Catalog Agent comes in. It scans your Shopify catalogue for missing or inconsistent categories and tags, weak titles, missing descriptions and products without enough images. It suggests improvements, and you approve or skip each one. Nothing changes on your store without your permission.

For the wider picture, reviews matter too. If you use REVIEWS.io you can connect it to Clearer. Clearer will then draft a reply to each new review for you. You decide, topic by topic, which replies post automatically and which come to you for approval first.

3. Watch the journey, not just the traffic counter

Once shoppers arrive, don’t stop at “AI traffic is up”. Look at where the AI traffic lands, how often those visits turn into orders and whether that behaviour is changing.

Bring customer questions into the conversation too. If people keep asking for information you thought was obvious, there’s something worth investigating. And remember, the AI referrals you can track won’t capture every purchase AI has influenced.

It’s also useful to know when a group of your customers starts buying differently, for example spending less even though there are just as many customers in that group. Clearer’s Segment Agent tracks your customer groups week on week. It flags a segment as “at risk” when its share of revenue falls while its size stays roughly the same, giving you a reason to revisit your audience assumptions before the next campaign.

The aim isn’t another dashboard. It’s knowing what’s working, what’s changing and where to focus next.

The shortlist comes before the sale. Is your store ready?

The real value of AI in eCommerce isn’t taking decisions out of your hands. It’s giving you the clarity and confidence to make them, and the tools to act on them.

Before you decide what to improve, you need to know where the opportunities are. Not sure where your store stands? Run our free Clearer Growth Check tool to see where your store could improve discovery, customer confidence and conversion, including whether your product data is clear enough for search engines and AI to understand.

Find the gaps now, while there’s still time to act.

Maddie Weatherill

October 16, 2026

•

6 minutes

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