{
  "id": "G07",
  "url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-data-freshness-for-ai",
  "title": "Product data freshness for AI: what to recheck and how often",
  "description": "Set recheck triggers for price, inventory, policies and specifications; distinguish real verification dates from decorative updated-year labels.",
  "answer": "Give each kind of product fact its own recheck trigger: offer facts such as price, stock and shipping whenever they change, policy facts whenever the policy is edited, and specifications whenever the product, supplier or manual changes, with a calendar backstop for each. Keep four dates per fact: when you saw it, when you verified it, when it's true from and until, and when to recheck it. Never treat an \"updated 2026\" label as evidence that anything was checked.",
  "take": "Price and stock are where freshness actually bites; a noise rating rarely changes. Put your recheck effort on the fast facts and stop spending it on the stable ones.",
  "summary": "Price changes by the hour, a return policy by the season, a noise rating almost never. Treating them the same wastes effort on the stable facts and leaves the fast ones stale. This is a recheck plan that matches the effort to the fact.",
  "claims": [
    {
      "text": "OpenAI says that when merchants update their pricing or shipping terms, there may be some delay before it is reflected in the information ChatGPT shows, and that it is working on faster update methods.",
      "source_title": "OpenAI Help Center: Shopping with ChatGPT Search, Pricing",
      "source_url": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-shopping-with-chatgpt-search",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Living help article. It gives no length for the delay."
    },
    {
      "text": "OpenAI's product feed reference says sale-window, expiration and availability dates do not schedule price or availability changes, that merchants should update current prices and availability when they change, and that pre_order and backorder values do not schedule a future stock change.",
      "source_title": "OpenAI Commerce: Products feed reference (Stable), Availability & inventory and value conventions",
      "source_url": "https://developers.openai.com/commerce/specs/file-upload/products",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Applies to OpenAI file-upload feeds. Shopify merchants are integrated through Shopify Catalog and may never upload this feed."
    },
    {
      "text": "OpenAI's merchant page says shopping is currently live for ChatGPT users in the U.S., and that Shopify and Etsy catalogs are already integrated with no additional setup or application.",
      "source_title": "OpenAI: Power product discovery in ChatGPT (merchant page)",
      "source_url": "https://chatgpt.com/merchants/",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "A merchant marketing page. Its rollout statements can change without notice."
    },
    {
      "text": "Shopify says Shopify Catalog continuously updates product data so AI channels receive the latest inventory and prices.",
      "source_title": "Shopify Help Center: Shopify Catalog and product discovery for agentic storefronts",
      "source_url": "https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/products",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "States no update interval, and does not say how long a receiving assistant keeps what it received."
    },
    {
      "text": "Shopify marks the Global Catalog description, options and generated attribute, specification, feature and selling-point fields as Inferred: generated or enriched by Shopify, possibly absent or varying in accuracy, and not merchant-authored source text.",
      "source_title": "Shopify: Global Catalog MCP, Inferred response fields",
      "source_url": "https://shopify.dev/docs/agents/catalog/global-catalog",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Living documentation. It does not say how often these fields are regenerated after a source change."
    },
    {
      "text": "Google Merchant Center says it can take up to 30 days for changes to policies, such as returns, to be reflected in a store's quality and potentially affect badge status.",
      "source_title": "Google Merchant Center Help: About the Store Quality program, Benefits",
      "source_url": "https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/14261098?hl=en",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "About the Store Quality score and badge only, not about AI answers or product listings."
    },
    {
      "text": "Google lists checking that Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up to date among the practices for AI features in Search.",
      "source_title": "Google Search Central: AI features and your website",
      "source_url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "documented",
      "limitation": "Gives no cadence and no ranking effect."
    },
    {
      "text": "In all 1,620 results of our 162-search Shopify agent-catalog snapshot, no field in the returned products or variants carried a date or time, and availability was a true or false value: true on 1,617 and false on 3.",
      "source_title": "Cart for Agents: Product fact freshness, how we checked",
      "source_url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-data-freshness-for-ai#how-we-checked",
      "source_date": "2026-10-26",
      "method": "observed",
      "limitation": "Search responses from one unpersonalized context on one date; 1,620 occurrences, not distinct products. Other catalog calls may carry more fields. Re-read October 27; not re-queried."
    },
    {
      "text": "For \"resistance bands for physical therapy after knee surgery\", one listing's option names carried discounts of \"Save 6%\" and \"Save 7%\", while the returned variant's selected option was labelled \"5 Band Set (Save 10%)\", a value not in the option list (variant title remained the product name; price USD 97.97). Its description said \"40 layers of premium latex\" and Shopify's generated specification list said \"30-layer premium latex\".",
      "source_title": "Cart for Agents: Product variants, a worked case",
      "source_url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-variant-structured-data",
      "source_date": "2026-10-26",
      "method": "observed",
      "limitation": "One record from one snapshot. We cannot tell which discount or layer count is current or correct."
    },
    {
      "text": "In a Claude-only screening round of our product-pick simulation, adding \"New 2026 / Bestseller\" to vague product copy scored 0 of 108 for each of the two products.",
      "source_title": "Cart for Agents: Agentic commerce optimization (ACO), stage 4",
      "source_url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/agent-commerce-optimization",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "controlled-simulation",
      "limitation": "Screening round on Claude models only, with supplied snippets and invented products. Not live behaviour."
    },
    {
      "text": "In a local build of this site made on the evening of October 27, 2026 (Toronto time), the homepage's data twin carried a \"generated\" field of 2026-10-28, because it records the build date in UTC.",
      "source_title": "Cart for Agents: Product fact freshness, how we checked",
      "source_url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-data-freshness-for-ai#how-we-checked",
      "source_date": "2026-10-27",
      "method": "observed",
      "limitation": "Our own build output. It shows what a build date means, not anything about other sites."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "OpenAI Help Center: Shopping with ChatGPT Search",
      "url": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-shopping-with-chatgpt-search",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "OpenAI Commerce: Products feed reference",
      "url": "https://developers.openai.com/commerce/specs/file-upload/products",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "OpenAI: Power product discovery in ChatGPT",
      "url": "https://chatgpt.com/merchants/",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Shopify Help Center: Shopify Catalog and product discovery for agentic storefronts",
      "url": "https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/products",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Shopify: Global Catalog MCP",
      "url": "https://shopify.dev/docs/agents/catalog/global-catalog",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Google Merchant Center Help: About the Store Quality program",
      "url": "https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/14261098?hl=en",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Google Search Central: AI features and your website",
      "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Cart for Agents: Product variants, bind size, color, price and stock to the right SKU",
      "url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-variant-structured-data",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    },
    {
      "title": "Cart for Agents: Agentic commerce optimization (ACO)",
      "url": "https://cartforagents.com/guides/agent-commerce-optimization",
      "accessed": "2026-10-27"
    }
  ],
  "limitations": [
    "Platform documentation was checked on 2026-10-27. Platform routes and their documentation change; re-check before acting.",
    "The template, its triggers and its backstop intervals are our proposal. They are not a platform requirement, and we have not measured whether any cadence changes what assistants show.",
    "No platform we read states how long an assistant keeps a price, stock status or specification after receiving it. That is unknown, not zero.",
    "The catalog observations come from one unpersonalized snapshot of 162 searches on October 26, 2026, re-read on October 27 but not re-queried. Live records may differ.",
    "The simulation result about \"New 2026 / Bestseller\" is a Claude-only screening round with supplied snippets. It is not live behaviour.",
    "Store and brand names are withheld."
  ],
  "related": [
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/agent-commerce-optimization",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-claim-provenance",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-feed-price-mismatch",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/machine-readable-product-data",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/product-evidence-graph",
    "https://cartforagents.com/guides/agent-ready-product-data"
  ],
  "published": "2026-10-27",
  "updated": "2026-10-27",
  "checked": "2026-10-27",
  "kind": "guide"
}