ChatGPT business agents and product feeds: what they do and who can use them

OpenAI’s help article describes a business agent as an assistant that answers questions from the information you provide. It cannot complete purchases, bookings or order lookups, and it links people to your website. Shopify is not required. You review and publish the agent yourself, and creating one requires the Persona identity check.

Launch reporting adds detail. Hans van Gent describes the agent as a branded chat started from your profile in a separate conversation, built from instructions you write plus your product and policy information. LLM Pulse, a vendor, reports that OpenAI runs the agent and that businesses cannot plug in an agent built elsewhere. tech-ish summarises OpenAI’s policy as requiring agents to disclose they are AI, avoid pressure tactics, avoid requesting sensitive personal data and avoid completing purchases without explicit permission. For the profile basics, see our guide to claiming your business in ChatGPT.

Eligibility is the main question we get. This is what the help article and launch reporting say.

Insights has a separate Agent tab, according to launch screenshots reported by Sanbi. What it contains was not documented in the sources we read. OpenAI does say businesses never receive conversations, including business agent chats.

A product feed gives ChatGPT a structured list of your products. tech-ish describes it as a file listing products with current prices and stock. OpenAI’s help article lists three ways to connect one: a Shopify feed, a CSV that follows OpenAI’s product feed specification or a hosted URL. Shopify merchants can connect from Business Hub or the Shopify admin, according to LLM Pulse.

Two limits are written into the help article. Connecting a feed does not publish an agent, and it does not guarantee recommendations. Products must also follow OpenAI’s Commerce policies. In other words, the feed makes accurate data available; whether ChatGPT recommends a product still depends on everything else it knows.

Most of our clients sell complex products through sales teams, not carts. For them, business agents are not available outside the US, and inside the US eligibility depends on whether OpenAI treats the company as an eligible online service business under its policy. We do not assume a B2B software company qualifies until the Business Hub flow says so.

The direction is still worth preparing for. Buyers are starting to research and shortlist inside assistants, and agents that answer product questions on a vendor’s behalf are an early form of that. Our service page on agent-ready buying covers how we structure product, pricing and policy content so assistants and agents can use it accurately.

1. Write the answers first: the 20 questions buyers ask before a demo, answered plainly on your site.
2. Publish policies clearly: security, data handling, contracts, support and refunds where they apply.
3. Structure products: a clean list of products or plans with names, who they are for and what they include.
4. Decide the handoff: where an agent should send people (pricing, demo request, documentation) and how you will track it.

OpenAI does not share agent conversations with businesses, so measurement has to come from the edges. Track clicks from the agent to your site with a dedicated landing path or tagged links where the setup allows it, watch the Agent tab in Insights as it fills in, and compare agent-referred visits with your normal ChatGPT referrals in analytics. Review a sample of the agent’s answers yourself every month by asking it the questions buyers ask, because you will not see theirs.

Agents and ads are separate products that meet in one place. Hans van Gent and tech-ish both report that a business agent can be the destination of a ChatGPT ad, which LLM Pulse calls a sponsored agent. tech-ish reports that ChatGPT ads appear only to Free and Go plan users, and PPC Land reported on October 21, 2026 that ChatGPT ads were available in 89 countries.

Two rules keep this straight. Paying to sponsor an agent buys placement as an ad; OpenAI says advertising does not influence ChatGPT’s independent answers. And an agent is still bound by the same limits whether people reach it organically or through an ad: it answers from your information and sends people to your site to act.

US online sellers and service businesses that qualify should test carefully. Write agent instructions from approved claims only, list the questions the agent must refuse or hand off, and track clicks from the agent to your site in analytics. Review every answer type before publishing, because the agent speaks in your name inside ChatGPT.

Our generative engine optimization service covers the content and measurement around profiles, feeds and agents.

If you want to decide whether an agent is worth testing for your business, talk to our team.