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Available to all AI Commerce Visibility customers.

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Summary

Product Categories are the unit of analysis in AI Commerce Visibility: each category names a product line you sell, the markets you sell it in, the competitors you want to be compared with and the product attributes that matter for it. Every prompt, chart and table in the Insights tabs is generated from the categories you activate, so configuration is the first step before any insight is available.

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Who it’s for

E-commerce and marketing teams who want to track how AI assistants treat specific product lines rather than the brand as a whole. A brand can be recommended often for one product line and never for another, and only a category-level view shows the difference.

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Key benefits

  • Tracking matches your catalogue, not generic keywords. Each category is a product line such as trail running shoes or espresso machines, with its own prompts, so you see where you are recommended in the categories you compete in.
  • Set-up starts from your website. On account creation, AI Commerce Visibility reads your website and proposes five product categories together with their markets, competitors and attributes. You can edit the proposals or add your own.
  • Each category has its own competitors. Your competitor for socks is not your competitor for shoes. Competitors are set per category, so the benchmarking tables compare you with the right brands.
  • Nothing runs until you activate it. New categories stay in Draft until you activate them, and activation tells you how many prompts it will create before anything runs.
  • Attributes are tailored to the category. You can configure up to five product attributes per category, and the attributes shown on the Brand tab adjust automatically to the category you select.

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How it works

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What a category contains

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Automatic set-up and generation

When an account is created, AI Commerce Visibility reads your website to identify your product taxonomy and proposes five product categories, each with suggested markets, competitors and attributes. The proposals arrive as drafts. You can also create a category by typing its name and selecting Generate. AI Commerce Visibility then proposes markets, competitors and attributes for that category, which you review and edit before saving.

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Attributes

Two kinds of attribute are tied to a category:
  • Product attributes are configurable, up to five per category. AI Commerce Visibility proposes an initial set from how the category is discussed online, for instance in reviews, product descriptions and editorial content, and you can replace or add to them. They drive the attribute comparison on the Product tab.
  • Brand attributes are not configurable. They are identified automatically from what AI assistants emphasise when they recommend brands in the category, and they change when you switch categories.
Sales channel attributes and trust attributes are fixed and do not depend on the category. See Sales Channel Visibility and Trust.

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Draft and activation

A category stays in Draft until you activate it. Activating a category:
  1. Generates the full prompt set for the category: prompts for every prompt category, for each of its markets. See Prompts.
  2. Activates those prompts so they run on the next scheduled execution.
  3. Links every active persona to the category in every market. See Personas.
Before activation, the portal shows how many prompts will be activated. First results typically appear within one to two hours of activation. You can deactivate a category later to stop its prompts, and add new categories at any time. Deactivating a category does not remove the data already collected.

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Where categories appear

The product category selector at the top of every Insights tab switches the whole view, including the Dashboard, Brand, Product, Merchant, Trust, Prompts and Sources tabs, to one category. The selected category also scopes content generation and data exports.

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Set up in the portal

Go to AI Commerce Visibility > Configuration > Product Category.
  1. Review the categories proposed from your website. Edit the markets, competitors and attributes of any category you want to keep.
  2. To add a category, enter its name and select Generate to have markets, competitors and attributes proposed, then adjust them.
  3. Check the category name before saving. It cannot be changed afterwards.
  4. Activate the categories you want to track. The portal shows the number of prompts that will be activated.
  5. Return to the Insights tabs after one to two hours to see the first results.
Start with two or three priority categories. Focused categories give clearer data than a broad category such as electronics, and you can add more at any time.

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FAQ

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How does AI Commerce Visibility know my categories?

It reads your website when the account is created and proposes five product categories with their markets, competitors and attributes. You can override any proposal, or create a category by name and use Generate to fill in the rest.

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Can I rename a category after saving it?

No. The category name is fixed once saved. Attributes and competitors can be edited at any time. To track the product line under a different name, create a new category.

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Can I use different competitors for different categories?

Yes. Competitors are configured per category, so each benchmarking table compares you with the brands relevant to that product line.

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Do I need to upload my product catalogue?

No. Products are identified from the AI assistants’ answers to the category’s prompts, so the Product tab shows the models that AI assistants actually mention.

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Why can’t I change the brand attributes?

Brand attributes are determined from what AI assistants emphasise for your category, so that the Brand tab reflects what the assistants weigh rather than what you choose. Product attributes, by contrast, can be configured, up to five per category.

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Troubleshooting