How to write Shopify product titles for AI agents

A product title does more work in AI shopping than it does on your own store. On your store, a shopper sees the title next to photos, a price and a description. An agent often has the title and a few other fields, and has to decide from those whether your product answers the question.

Most of the public guidance on titles is thin, so this post separates what the platforms say from what is our own judgment. The judgment is labeled.

The title is the field you control most

For AI channels connected through Shopify, product data comes from Shopify Catalog. Shopify’s developer docs list the fields the catalog generates or enriches itself: description, options, metadata.attributes, metadata.tech_specs, metadata.top_features, metadata.unique_selling_points and variants[].condition. Those are tagged Inferred, and Shopify says to treat them “as discovery and merchandising signals, not as merchant-authored source text” (Global Catalog docs).

title isn’t in that table. The docs don’t say outright that the title is passed through untouched, so treat that as an absence of a label, not a guarantee. Still, it makes the title the main text field where your wording is the input. We cover the inferred fields in What Shopify’s AI adds to your listings.

Shopify’s own advice is short: “Use clear, concise product titles” (Optimizing your store for AI). Its listing-quality meter checks description, images, reviews, variants and policies, and doesn’t score titles at all (Managing agentic storefronts). So there’s no Shopify score to chase here.

What Google and OpenAI publish

Neither company is writing for Shopify merchants specifically, but both say something concrete about titles.

Google’s Merchant Center rules allow 1 to 150 characters and say to “put the most important details first,” because “users will usually notice only the first 70 or fewer characters.” They also say not to include promotional text such as price, sale dates or shipping, and not to use capital letters for emphasis (Google title requirements).

OpenAI’s product feed spec, for merchants who send ChatGPT a feed directly, asks for concise titles and descriptions in plain text, “at most 150” characters for the title (OpenAI product feed spec).

And OpenAI’s help center says ChatGPT “may generate simplified product titles and descriptions based on information it receives from third-party providers,” because merchants use different titles for the same product (Shopping with ChatGPT search). Your title may not reach the shopper word for word. That is a reason to make the plain version of it obviously correct.

A working pattern (our judgment)

Nothing above tells you how to structure a title. This is what we’d do, based on those constraints and on the claims we see summaries get wrong.

• Lead with the thing. Product type first, then the brand or line if it helps. “Mineral sunscreen lotion, SPF 50, baby and kids” beats “Sunny Days Summer Glow.”
• Put the facts that separate it from its neighbors early. Size, count, age range, material, scent or color. These are what a shopper’s question is likely to contain.
• Use the same numbers everywhere. If the title says “60 capsules” and the product details say 90, a summary has to pick one. Ages, sizes and counts are the slips we see most.
• Name the variant only if variants are separate products. If your options live in variants, keep them in the options. If you sell each size as its own product, say the size in the title, as Google’s guidance says to for variants.
• Leave out claims you don’t want repeated as fact. “Best,” “#1,” “clinically proven” and “hypoallergenic” in a title can be lifted into a summary with no context. If a claim matters, make it in the description where it can be qualified.
• Drop the marketing. “Cult favorite,” “must-have” and sale text tell an agent nothing it can match, and Google says to leave promotions out.

A made-up before and after: “Little Sprout Co. Cloud Blanket NEW Best Seller” becomes “Cotton muslin blanket, 47 x 47 inches, Little Sprout Co.” The second one is longer, but every word is something a shopper might ask about. Little Sprout Co. is the fictional example store in our docs.

Titles and the rest of the listing

A title can’t carry everything. It sets what the product is, and the description carries what the product does and doesn’t do. The rules for the description are in How to write product descriptions for AI shopping agents, and the two should agree on every number.

If your customer-facing name lives somewhere other than the title, such as a metafield because the title carries a SKU, Shopify’s Catalog Mapping lets you choose which source the catalog uses for the title. Steps are in Shopify metafields for AI shopping: Catalog Mapping.

A title also can’t help a product that isn’t in the catalog. If a product is missing entirely, start with Shopify Catalog requirements.

Checking a title in practice

Rewrite the titles for your top sellers first, then look at the result from the outside. A 30-minute product data audit for AI agents walks through that. For more of these, see the how-to posts.

Common questions

How long should a Shopify product title be?

Shopify doesn’t publish a length for AI channels. Google allows up to 150 characters and notes shoppers mostly see the first 70. OpenAI’s feed spec also says at most 150. Putting the essentials in the first 70 covers both.

Should I put keywords in the title?

Put the words a shopper would use to describe the product, once each. Stuffing a title with variations doesn’t help a summary and can make it read as promotional, which Google’s rules discourage.

Can I fix a title that AI agents get wrong?

You can fix your own. If the wrong wording comes from the catalog’s generated fields rather than your title, nobody outside Shopify can edit it. Fixing a finding explains what to change in your own copy and what to leave. Hearsay’s free scan shows what the catalog says about 5 of your products next to what you wrote.