Fix guides
WooCommerce problems that keep your store out of AI answers — and how to fix each one
Every guide covers one specific, machine-detectable problem: what the symptom is, why it matters for ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity, how to check it yourself and how to fix it — with the plugin and hosting settings involved.
Crawler access
- Critical
Your robots.txt is telling ChatGPT and Perplexity to stay out
If robots.txt disallows GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot or Google-Extended, AI assistants cannot read or recommend your WooCommerce store. Exact rules to fix it.
- Critical
Your firewall answers browsers but rejects AI crawlers
Cloudflare "Block AI bots", Bot Fight Mode and WAF rules return 403 to GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot even when robots.txt allows them. Which switches to change.
- Critical
Your robots.txt blocks every crawler
A blanket Disallow: / in robots.txt — usually left over from staging or "Discourage search engines" — keeps a WooCommerce store out of Google, Shopping and every AI answer.
AI readability
- Critical
Your product pages have no Product schema
Without Product JSON-LD, ChatGPT, Google Shopping and AI Overviews cannot verify what you sell, at what price, or whether it is in stock. Why WooCommerce stores lose it and how to restore valid Product schema.
- High
Your Product schema has an Offer without a price
A Product JSON-LD block whose Offer lacks price or priceCurrency cannot be shown in Google Shopping or quoted by AI assistants. Common WooCommerce causes and fixes.
- High
Your Offers do not say whether the product is in stock
AI shopping answers and Google Shopping filter on availability. If your WooCommerce Offer schema has no schema.org/InStock value, products drop out of the list. Causes and fix.
- High
Your products have no GTIN, EAN or MPN
Without GTIN/EAN codes, Google Merchant Center limits your listings and AI assistants cannot match your product to the same product elsewhere. Where to add GTINs in WooCommerce and how they reach schema and feeds.
- Medium
Your products have no brand
Brand is required for Google merchant listings and used by AI assistants to compare products. How to add brands in WooCommerce (built-in Brands, attributes) and output them to schema and feeds.
Cart, checkout & content
- Critical
Your checkout is returning a server error
A WooCommerce checkout or cart page returning HTTP 500, "There has been a critical error" or a blank page means every purchase attempt fails — often for days before the owner notices. How to diagnose and fix fast.
- Critical
Checkout says there are no shipping options
When WooCommerce shows "There are no shipping options available" the order cannot be placed. Zones, methods, plugin conflicts and cache causes — and the fix.
- High
Your catalogue has no merchant feed
Google AI Mode, Shopping, Copilot and ChatGPT Shopping ground product answers in merchant feeds. If your WooCommerce store publishes none, the catalogue is invisible to that surface. How to set feeds up.
- High
Your product pages have nothing for AI to answer with
AI assistants answer buyer questions from the product page text. One-line supplier descriptions give them nothing to quote. A practical template for answer-ready WooCommerce product pages.
- Medium
Your delivery and returns terms are not where buyers and AI look
Shipping cost, delivery time and return policy are the questions shoppers ask AI assistants most. If they are buried in a footer PDF, your store loses the recommendation. How to state them on product pages and in schema.
- Medium
Your checkout forces customers to register
Requiring an account before purchase is one of the most reliably measured causes of cart abandonment. One WooCommerce setting fixes it, plus what to keep for repeat buyers.
Trust & email
- High
Your order confirmations are landing in spam
Missing SPF, DKIM or DMARC records make WooCommerce order confirmations, password resets and shipping updates go to spam — and let anyone spoof your shop. DNS records and SMTP setup that fix it.
- Medium
Your products carry no rating or review markup
AggregateRating and Review schema are among the strongest trust signals AI assistants and Google use when choosing which store to name. How to collect reviews in WooCommerce and output valid rating schema.
- Medium
Your store itself is not identified
Organization / OnlineStore schema tells Google and AI assistants who runs the store, where, and how to contact you. Without it, answers cannot attribute a recommendation to your business. Quick fix for WooCommerce.
- Medium
Your WordPress or WooCommerce is out of date
Old WooCommerce releases emit product schema that current engines reject, miss the GTIN and Brands fields, and are the most common way small stores get compromised. Safe update procedure.
SEO hygiene
- Critical
Your product pages ask search engines not to index them
A noindex robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag on WooCommerce product pages removes every product from Google, Shopping and AI answers. Where it comes from (Rank Math, Yoast, hosting) and how to remove it.
- Medium
No XML sitemap found
Without an XML sitemap listed in robots.txt and Search Console, new and deep product pages take weeks to be discovered by Google and AI crawlers. Two-minute fix for WooCommerce.
- Medium
Your language versions are not linked with hreflang
A store in Estonian, Finnish and English without hreflang tags gets the wrong version shown to each market and splits rankings. How to fix hreflang with WPML, Polylang or TranslatePress.
- Medium
Your products have no canonical URL
WooCommerce ?orderby=, ?filter_color=, pagination and variation parameters create thousands of duplicate URLs. Without canonical tags they split ranking signals. How to set canonicals correctly.
- Low
Your pages have no meta descriptions
Without meta descriptions, Google and AI surfaces scrape random page text for the summary. How to set a meta description template for WooCommerce products and categories in Rank Math or Yoast.
Speed
- Medium
Your server takes too long to answer
Time to first byte above ~800 ms costs rankings, conversions and crawl coverage. The usual WooCommerce causes — no page cache, slow hosting, heavy plugins, uncached cart fragments — and how to fix them.
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