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How to index your Shopify products so an AI can search them
Without an index the agent has nothing to search, and a product question becomes a guess. Indexing is the step that turns your catalogue into something the agent can use.
4 min read
What does indexing actually do?
It reads your products and builds a private search index for your store, so the agent can find the right product from a description rather than an exact product name.
The index lives in a vector store, isolated per merchant. Your catalogue is not mixed with anyone else's.
Because the embedding model is multilingual, a customer can ask in their own language and still match products whose titles and descriptions are written in yours.
Which products get indexed?
Your active products, up to the limit of your plan: 100 on Free, 2,500 on Small Business and 5,000 on Growth Business.
The product count shown in Settings is the number of products covered. If your catalogue is larger than your plan allows, index the products that generate the most pre-sales questions first.
Products the agent cannot see are products it will not answer about, so a partial index shows up as gaps on exactly the questions you most wanted to deflect.
How do you keep the index up to date?
Webhooks keep it in step with your store after the first indexing run, so a price change or a new product does not require re-indexing by hand.
The initial run is the slow part. After that, changes propagate as your store changes.
Note a current limitation: removing products from the index is not exposed in the app, so indexing effectively runs one way. If you delete products from your catalogue, treat their stale index entries as something to raise with support rather than something you can clear yourself.
What makes an index answer well?
Product descriptions and fit or specification notes that a customer would actually search for. The agent answers from what your product data says, so thin data produces thin answers.
"Do you have this in a medium?" is answered from variants and inventory, which you already maintain.
"Is this good for sensitive skin?" is only answerable if that information exists in your product data. The index does not invent it, and an agent instructed not to guess will say it does not know.
Common questions
Does indexing send my catalogue anywhere public?
No. It builds a private index for your store alone, scoped to your account.
Do I have to re-index when I change a price?
No. After the initial indexing run, webhooks keep the index in step with your store.
What happens if my catalogue is bigger than my plan allows?
Only the number of products your plan covers will be answerable. Upgrade the plan or narrow the catalogue you index.
Related guides
- How to choose which Shopify data your agent may read
- How to set up an AI agent that answers from your live inventory
All guides are listed in the help centre. If none of them answers it, email [email protected].
Start with the free plan
Free: 1 agent, 100 messages a month and up to 100 products indexed. No credit card required, billed through Shopify, cancel any time.