More shoppers now ask an AI assistant instead of searching: “when should I take ashwagandha?”, “what’s a good gift for a runner?”. AI answers shows you whether those assistants mention your store when they answer, which of your pages they link to, and which other sites they send shoppers to instead. Open it from Marketing → AI answers, or go straight to platformdtc.com/marketing/ai-answers.
AI answers is off until you turn it on for your store.

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Turn it on

1

Switch on weekly checks

Turn on Weekly checks. The screen shows the day your first check runs.
2

Add your shoppers' questions

Add the questions your shoppers really ask, in their own words, for example “best time of day to take magnesium”. Each question is 5 to 200 characters, and you can keep up to 30.
3

Come back after the first check

Until the first check has run, the screen shows only the day it runs. Results appear after that.
To stop, turn Weekly checks off. Your questions and past results are kept.

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Add or remove questions

Add a question at any time. It is asked at the next weekly check. When you remove a question, it isn’t asked again, and the weeks it was already checked stay in your history. Good questions are ones a shopper would type before they know your store exists. Leave your brand name out of them, otherwise every assistant will mention you and the check tells you nothing.

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Read the results

The top line says how you did this week, for example “Mentioned in 4 of 30 questions this week”.
  • Mentioned means an assistant named your brand in its answer or linked to your store.
  • Linked means an assistant cited one of your store’s pages as a source.
Below that:
  • Each question has a ✓ or ✗ for every assistant. Open a question to see a short part of each answer and the pages each assistant cited.
  • Your pages AI cites most: the pages on your store that assistants link to, most cited first.
  • Sites AI cites instead of you: the other websites assistants link to for your questions, most cited first. These are the pages to beat.
  • Over time: how many questions mentioned you each week, so you can see whether new guides and product pages are working.
If an assistant couldn’t be reached during a check, that question shows no mark for it that week. A missed answer is never counted as “not mentioned”.

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How we check

Once a week, each of your questions is asked once to each assistant, with web search on, through OpenRouter: The questions are asked through these companies’ APIs, not inside the ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini apps. The apps can answer differently: they may use other models, your shopper’s history or location, or a different search. Treat the results as a steady weekly measure of where you stand, not as a copy of what one shopper saw. Your store counts as linked when a cited page is on any of your store’s domains, including your custom domain. Your brand counts as mentioned when its name appears in the answer.

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Help assistants cite you

  • Write guides that answer one question clearly in the first few lines, then explain. Cite trusted sources for health or safety facts.
  • Give each product a real description: what it is, what’s in it, how to use it.
  • Keep your store open to AI crawlers. PlatformDTC stores allow them by default.
  • Auto blog can keep adding helpful posts for you.

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For developers

Your own AI agent can read the results and manage the questions with these tools (connect your own agent): The same endpoints over REST, with a dashboard session or an agent key: Agents can also call them through the Agent Gateway at https://api.platformdtc.com/api/v1/agent/v1/online_store/ai_answers….