The Black Friday AI shopping checklist

1. Prices and stock

• Sale prices end when your sale ends. Done when every Black Friday price in your Merchant Center feed uses the sale price attribute with an effective date range, so the old sale price doesn't linger after the sale.
• Your feed matches your pages. Done when price and stock for your 20 best sellers are the same in Merchant Center and on the product page.
• Sold-out means sold-out everywhere. Done when a product that sells out shows as out of stock in your feed and on its page the same day.

Google's new Universal Cart, live in the US since October 15, tracks prices on items shoppers save and alerts them to price drops. PPC Land's review of Google's documentation found those alerts come from Google's copy of your product data, so a stale feed can send a shopper a price that's already gone.

2. Delivery dates

• Holiday order cutoffs are written on the page. Done when your best sellers state the last day to order for delivery by December 25 in the page text.
• Delivery settings are filled in for Google. Done when handling time, transit time and your daily order cutoff time are set in Merchant Center.

Google's shipping documentation explains that orders placed after your cutoff time add a day to the delivery estimate. It also says your Merchant Center settings take priority over shipping markup on your site, so Merchant Center is the place to get right first.

3. Holiday returns

• Your holiday return window has dates. Done when your returns page and your product pages state the window plainly, for example "orders placed from November 1 can be returned until January 31".
• Google has the same window. Done when your return policy in Merchant Center has a seasonal override covering those dates.

Google supports seasonal return overrides "for special events, such as holidays", both in Merchant Center and in return policy markup on your site. As with shipping, the Merchant Center setting takes priority over the markup.

4. Gift answers

• Your top 10 products answer gift questions. Done when each page says who it's for, the price, what's in the box or set, and whether gift wrap or a gift receipt is available, near the top.
• You have gift pages by price and by person. Done when "gifts under $50" style pages and "gifts for her" style pages exist, link to real products and went live this week.

Shoppers ask AI exactly these questions: "a gift for my sister who's into skincare, under $50". A page that answers the question in plain words gives the engine something to quote. Here's how to set up collection pages Google's AI can use.

5. AI shopping channels

• Merchant Center is clean. Done when no best seller is disapproved and your return policy and support contact are filled in.
• You know your checkout settings on Google. Done when you've checked whether checkout on Google is switched on for your store, and you're happy with the setting.
• ChatGPT can see your products. Done when your catalog reaches ChatGPT, through Shopify's Agentic Storefronts or OpenAI's product feed.

PPC Land reports that Google switched on checkout on Google automatically for Shopify merchants in September, and that Google's own checkout needs a return policy and a support contact in Merchant Center. If you sell on Shopify and haven't looked at this setting, look before the rush. For ChatGPT, here's how products get into ChatGPT.

6. Access and lookalikes

• Crawlers can still reach you. Done when your robots.txt and any bot protection you turn on for the sale still let Googlebot, Bingbot and OAI-SearchBot through.
• AI isn't sending your buyers to a fake store. Done when you've asked ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini where to buy your brand on sale, and every store they name is real.

NordVPN found a network of more than 10,000 fake stores impersonating 166 fashion and luxury brands, and Money reported on November 6 that Perplexity recommended two of them alongside real retailers. If an engine names a store you don't recognize, report the answer with the engine's feedback button and tell your legal team.

7. Measure it

• You saved a baseline this week. Done when you've asked your holiday questions on ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Claude and saved dated screenshots of who got named.
• AI visits show up in your analytics. Done when you can see visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com in GA4 or Shopify.
• You ask buyers how they found you. Done when your checkout or post-purchase survey asks "How did you hear about us?" with an AI option.

The survey question catches sales your analytics files under direct. For about a week in mid-October, ChatGPT links arrived without their tracking tags, and Search Engine Roundtable reported that those visits landed under direct until the tags came back on October 15. Here's how to run the baseline test and how to see ChatGPT traffic in GA4 and Shopify.