Ask an Expert: Should Merchants Block AI Bots?

“Ask an Expert” is an occasional series where we pose questions to seasoned ecommerce pros. For this installment, we’ve turned to Scot Wingo, a serial ecommerce entrepreneur most recently of ReFiBuy, a generative engine optimization platform, and before that, ChannelAdvisor, the marketplace management firm.

He addresses tactics for managing genAI bots.

Practical Ecommerce: Should ecommerce merchants monitor and even block AI agents that crawl their sites?

Scot Wingo: It’s a nuanced and strategic decision essential to every merchant.

Scot Wingo

The four agentic commerce experiences — ChatGPT (Instant Checkout, Agentic Commerce Protocol), Google Gemini (Universal Commerce Protocol), Microsoft Copilot (Copilot Checkout, ACP), and Perplexity (PayPal, Instant Buy) — have nearly 1 billion combined monthly active users. With Google transitioning from traditional search to AI Mode, that number will dramatically increase.

For merchants, the opportunity is as big or bigger than Amazon or any other marketplace.

Merchants should embrace AI agents and ensure access to the entire product catalog.

But genAI models need more than access. Agentic commerce thrives not just on extensive attributes but also on the products’ applications and use cases. Merchants should expand attributes beyond what’s shown on product detail pages and provide essential context via a deep and wide question-and-answer section that includes common shopper queries. It enables the models to match consumer prompts with relevant recommendations, driving sales to those merchants.

The time for action is now. Gemini’s shift to AI Mode means zero-click searches will increase, likely producing 20-30% fewer clicks (and revenue) in 2026.