Research · October 1, 2026
Shoppers can see your shipping and returns. AI agents mostly can’t
We read 100 independent US Shopify stores the way an AI shopping agent reads them. Almost every store explains shipping and returns to people. Very few put that information in the product data agents read.
The same facts, two audiences
Shoppers read your policy pages. Software that reads a product page for someone, like an AI shopping agent or a search engine, reads its structured product data, a machine-readable summary of price, stock, shipping and returns. Here’s how often each place has the answer.
The basics are mostly there. Shipping and returns are the gap. 69 of 80 readable product pages (86%) have neither one in their product data. When a shopper asks an assistant “What does shipping cost?” or “Can I return it?”, that data alone can’t answer.
What the product data does include
*Description counts the catalog text too
Google’s own tool agrees. When we ran a page from the study through the Rich Results Test, it reported “Missing field shippingDetails” and “Missing field hasMerchantReturnPolicy”. Google marks both as optional for its search listings, which may be why so few stores add them. To an agent answering a buying question, they’re the answer.
No store blocked AI search crawlers
Blocking isn’t the issue. In this sample, 0 of 99 robots.txt files (0%) told ChatGPT’s search crawler, Perplexity or Bing not to read the product page. Crawlers can get in. What they find once they’re there is the problem.
Where does your store stand?
Run the free instant check on your Shopify store. It looks for the same fields on one of your product pages, in seconds.
Check my storeHow we did it
- The stores. 100 independent US Shopify stores that price in US dollars, across nine categories: coffee and tea, apparel, home, beauty, pets, outdoor, jewelry, kitchen and food. 45 came from our own AI shopper tests and 55 are well-known direct-to-consumer brands. This is not a random sample of all Shopify stores.
- The page. For each store, the first product for sale in its public catalog. We loaded that page in a real browser (after JavaScript runs) and also read the raw HTML. A field counts as present if either read finds it.
- Unknown is not missing. 20 product pages couldn’t be read completely (heavy pages, bot protection, or product data we couldn’t parse in full). They’re left out of the product-data figures rather than counted as missing. That leaves 80 pages.
- Policy pages. Shopify’s standard shipping and refund policy pages, counted when they have real text.
- robots.txt. Rules for OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Bingbot on the product URL, checked with two independent parsers that had to agree.
- Checks. A separate raw-HTML search found no page where we missed shipping or return data. We also ran one page from the study through Google’s Rich Results Test, and it reported the same missing fields. All checks ran on October 1, 2026.
- Privacy. We publish totals only, never store names.
All the numbers
| Measure | Share | Stores | Out of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Has a shipping policy page for people | 96% | 92 of 96 | stores whose policy page could be read |
| Has a refund policy page for people | 99% | 95 of 96 | stores whose policy page could be read |
| Shipping in the product data | 10% | 8 of 80 | fully readable product pages |
| Return policy in the product data | 12% | 10 of 80 | fully readable product pages |
| Shipping page for people, but no shipping in the product data | 89% | 68 of 76 | readable pages of stores with a shipping page |
| Refund page for people, but no returns in the product data | 87% | 68 of 78 | readable pages of stores with a refund page |
| Neither shipping nor returns in the product data | 86% | 69 of 80 | fully readable product pages |
| Any product structured data | 91% | 73 of 80 | fully readable product pages |
| Price | 89% | 71 of 80 | fully readable product pages |
| Availability | 88% | 70 of 80 | fully readable product pages |
| Description (product data or catalog) | 84% | 67 of 80 | fully readable product pages |
| Ratings | 28% | 22 of 80 | fully readable product pages |
| robots.txt blocks an AI search crawler | 0% | 0 of 99 | stores whose robots.txt could be read |
Questions about the data: hello@meetbeatrice.com. Read more about how Beatrice tests stores.