Blind AI agents failed WooCommerce product searches without machine-readable signals
A test pitted blind GPT-class AI agents against live WooCommerce stores to see how they navigate product discovery without guidance. On a baseline store with no agent infrastructure, agents failed every run, burning through 27 page fetches of theme HTML before producing answers from fragments. When two lightweight machine-readable signals were added — an HTML comment and an HTTP Link header pointing to a structured catalog API — agents succeeded in all three runs, with one explicitly crediting the Link header for redirecting its approach. Removing a human-visible 'agent-ready' badge had zero effect on agent behavior, confirming it serves shoppers, not bots. The structured catalog also cut listing payload by 93%, highlighting that stores difficult for AI to parse risk being read poorly or skipped entirely.
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