Artificial intelligence is already revolutionising the way people shop online and will change it even more profoundly in the coming years. This is also massively changing your competitive environment. Unlike in the era of traditional search engines, your influence on your visibility is very limited. For example, you cannot influence ...
- ... which sources an AI system prefers.
- ... how often an AI system checks and updates its data.
- ... how an AI system summarises information.
However, you can create the conditions that help AI systems understand your website and assess its trustworthiness. In this article, you will learn which measures you can take:
- Keep company information up to date and consistent
- Link your company profile
- Collect and respond to authentic reviews
- Make trust signals technically accessible
- Use structured data for AI systems
- Keep public content accessible for AI crawlers
- Use the free AI Trust Audit
Keep company information up to date and consistent
Websites such as your Trusted Shops company profile make it easier for AI systems to analyse and assign your website. They are therefore often one of the most important sources that AI systems access.
Therefore, regularly check the following information within your company profile:
- Are the company name and website URL correct and up to date?
- Do the selected categories and description reflect your actual offering?
- Is Buyer Protection active and is the Trustmark displayed?
AI systems compare information from different sources. Therefore, also make sure that this information matches other public platforms. Contradictions can not only make it more difficult to clearly assign your company, but also negatively affect the assessment of your trustworthiness.
Link your company profile
Link your Trusted Shops company profile in suitable places on your website, for example on service pages.
This allows search engines and other crawlers to recognise the relationship between your website and your company profile more easily and assign the trust information provided there to your company.
If possible, use a standard link without rel="nofollow", unless there are technical or strategic reasons not to do so. This ensures that the connection remains as clear and traceable as possible for crawlers.
Collect and respond to authentic reviews
In addition to consistency, AI systems also reward activity and recency. By collecting reviews automatically, you create a steady flow of authentic user-generated content. This not only shows the AI system that your company is active, but also increases the chance that it will classify your company as trustworthy.
By regularly responding to reviews, you create additional content yourself that the AI system can evaluate. With this content, you show that you respond to feedback, take responsibility and actively engage with your customers’ experiences.
Make trust signals technically accessible
Collecting trust signals such as reviews and the Trustmark is only the first step. Providing these signals in a way that is tailored to AI systems is the second. Unlike people, AI systems cannot rely on visual representations on your website alone. They also need machine-readable data.
Trusted Shops already provides your trust signals automatically via the Trustbadge. However, for some AI systems, it may be useful to provide additional structured trust data directly in your website’s HTML. Trusted Shops provides you with a structured markup that is updated daily for this purpose.
You can find more information in the following articles:
Use structured data for AI systems
AI systems can interpret information more reliably when it is provided in a structured and machine-readable format.
In addition to Trusted Shops trust signals, you can also mark up other content on your website with structured data. This includes, for example:
- Products
- Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
- Company information
- Breadcrumb navigation
- Reviews and product availability
Use established standards such as Schema.org. This helps AI systems assign content more clearly and recognise relationships more easily.
In addition to structured data, the way you design your content also plays a role. Format content so that it answers specific questions and is easy to understand. Suitable examples include:
- FAQ sections
- Step-by-step instructions
- Numbered lists
- Overviews and checklists
A clear structure makes it easier for both people and AI systems to quickly capture relevant information.
Keep public content accessible for AI crawlers
AI systems can only take information into account if they can access it. Therefore, regularly check whether relevant pages on your website can be accessed by crawlers. These include, for example:
- Homepage
- Company information
- Legal texts
- Pages with reviews
- Pages with trust information
Avoid unnecessary restrictions in the robots.txt file, unless there are technical or legal reasons for them. Also, do not block crawlers without a clear reason and regularly review any restrictions you have set so that you can take future crawler developments into account.
Use the free AI Trust Audit
Are you still unsure how well your website is currently prepared for AI systems? Then analyse your status quo with the free AI Trust Audit from Trusted Shops.
With the AI Trust Audit, you receive within just a few seconds ...
- ... clear results from more than 50 checks, including technical factors, content quality, trust signals, reviews, shop reputation and off-site authority.
- ... traceable recommendations for action that show you exactly which optimisations can immediately strengthen your visibility and which trust signals are currently missing.
- ... a transparent assessment of how strong your review and trust foundation is – and how you can improve it.