ChatGPT uses Google Shopping (not Bing) to show you the products it sells
How ChatGPT's product carousel really works, and what needs to change to appear in AI Search and actually sell your products
E-COMMERCEAI
@persona.fra
5/18/20263 min read
If you have ever asked ChatGPT to recommend a product, you will have noticed since March 2026 that a storefront appears with images, prices and direct links. (6) It was not clear how this storefront worked, but many had speculated that the products came from Bing Shopping (1), given the partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft. A new study published in Search Engine Land (2) in March 2026 shows that things are quite different.
The discovery in the code
Tom Wells, a GEO researcher at Peec AI, identified a hidden field in ChatGPT's source code called id_to_token_map. By decoding it, he found parameters that unambiguously point to Google Shopping, such as productid and offerid.
Not only that: from those parameters it was possible to reconstruct the exact product URL on Google, confirming that ChatGPT pulls directly from there.
The study
The study analysed over 43,000 products featured in ChatGPT carousels, comparing them against organic results from Google Shopping and Bing Shopping across more than 200,000 products in total. The results are very clear:
83% of products in the ChatGPT carousel match the top 40 organic results on Google Shopping;
Only 11% match Bing Shopping;
Just 0.16% of products were found exclusively on Bing and not on Google.
Furthermore, 60% of matches come from the top 10 Google Shopping results, which suggests that ChatGPT favours products that rank better organically on Google.
What this means for marketers
The data has direct implications for every e-commerce business:
"Being visible in ChatGPT's carousel does not depend on Bing, but on your organic ranking on Google Shopping."
Anyone optimising exclusively for Bing, reasoning from the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership (3), risks working on the wrong channel and not putting their energy where it matters: improving their organic feed.
The study does clarify, however, that ranking on Google Shopping is not the only factor. The product's reputation across the contextual sources consulted by ChatGPT also appears to influence the final selection. In other words, it matters both how you appear on Google Shopping and how your product is perceived online in general, through blog articles, posts and reviews that can confirm you and your product are what the user is actually looking for.
Same rules for everyone
For anyone wondering, the study analysed 10 different product categories (from electronics to toys, from beauty to pet supplies, and so on), and the pattern held consistently for both generic and branded searches. This rules out any chance it is an isolated case: it is an architectural behaviour built into the online selling system, not specific to one sector or product category.
As Wells himself notes, this is a snapshot of current behaviour. OpenAI could change its sources at any time (4), but this pattern has remained stable over the four months of observation (December 2025 to March 2026), so it is worth paying attention to and studying for the near future.
If you are not doing this for work and you have made it this far, congratulations on your curiosity, and we would love to know more about your mental disorders. We will happily share ours in return.
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Sourses
Microsoft - Microsoft Shopping campaigns https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/solutions/ad-products-formats/retail/shopping-campaigns
Search Engine Land (2026) - ChatGPT sources 83% of its carousel products from Google Shopping via shopping query fan-outs https://searchengineland.com/new-finding-chatgpt-sources-83-of-its-carousel-products-from-google-shopping-via-shopping-query-fan-outs-470723
OpenAI (2026) - Joint Statement from OpenAI and Microsoft https://openai.com/index/continuing-microsoft-partnership/
OpenAI (2025) - Buy it on ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and Agentic Commerce Protocol https://openai.com/it-IT/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/
YouTube (2026) - An updated shopping experience in ChatGPT https://youtu.be/qF4QRh2u7FE?si=cSDuaQEFluY1iBD2