Store: `garamoto.com` (`0qsvxh-nc.myshopify.com`), a US motorcycle parts store with about 21,000 active products. The agentic channel is on, every readiness check is green, products are synced to the Shopify Catalog, and all policies are complete.
What happened: ChatGPT referral traffic and orders were healthy for about three months, then stopped on July 25, 2026. Referral sessions ran 3 to 11 per day through July 24, then dropped to near zero and have stayed there for a month. Every other channel was healthy across the same window, and Google Search impressions actually grew. The problem is isolated to the ChatGPT surface.
Receipts from our order landing URLs that show which ChatGPT surface died:
1. July 4, July 12, and July 19: three orders attributed to ChatGPT. Every landing URL carries `utm_source=chatgpt.com&utm_medium=feed` plus an `oppcref` parameter. That is the purchase path of the ChatGPT Shopping product feed.
2. Since July 19 there have been zero orders carrying those feed markers.
3. On August 24 one ChatGPT order returned, and its landing URL carries only `utm_source=chatgpt.com`. No `utm_medium=feed` and no `oppcref`. That is a plain link click from a ChatGPT web answer, and the ChatGPT web crawler had reindexed our site around that same date.
So the web answer surface recovered on its own. The Shopping feed surface is still dead as of August 26.
What I verified as green on the Shopify side, all reproducible:
1. The Global Catalog MCP at `catalog.shopify.com/api/ucp/mcp`: a `search_catalog` call for `Continental ContiMotion 140/70ZR17 motorcycle tire` returns our product at position 4 of 20, priced at $133.99 and available, and `lookup_catalog` with our product URL resolves correctly. We are present and ranking today in the global catalog that agents query.
2. The Storefront MCP at `/api/mcp` on our shop serves the same product correctly.
3. The test a query tool on the Admin Agentic page ranks us in the top ten for that product’s own query.
4. Eligibility: products are active and in stock, the products that converted have GTINs, there is no password page, terms are accepted, and policies are complete. Our shipping zone has not changed since June: 47 states plus DC, with Louisiana, Alaska, and Hawaii excluded. It was constant through the healthy months and through the cutoff.
On the OpenAI side: the ChatGPT web index knows `garamoto.com` and crawled our product pages within the last few days. The shopping catalog returns only other merchants for identical queries. When I asked ChatGPT to check both channels itself, it concluded, in its own words: “Gara has a catalog, but Gara isn’t currently syndicated into the Shopping channel’s searchable product inventory.” I also had it pull our top ranked SKUs, and the shopping channel served competitors for every one of them.
The support loop so far: Shopify support told me the products are syndicated to ChatGPT but could not provide sync or ingestion receipts, and suggested contacting ChatGPT support. The OpenAI help article for Shopify merchants, article 20001241, says OpenAI support cannot manage catalog issues and points back to Shopify. So the only diagnostic path runs through Shopify.
Three questions:
1. Can someone check whether our shop is excluded at the OpenAI syndication layer, and when the last successful handoff for our shop was?
2. OpenAI updated its product feed spec around July 21 with renamed and stricter fields. Did our export fail validation under the new spec, and if so, on which fields? The date of the break lines up.
3. Does the syndication to ChatGPT apply its own filter on buyer shipping destinations, and does it require delivery to all 50 states? We exclude Louisiana, Alaska, and Hawaii, and the Shopify Catalog accepts that today, since we still surface in its searches.
I am happy to provide session data, order timestamps, or anything else that helps.