Amazon’s AI Walled Garden: Why ChatGPT Rarely Sends Traffic to Amazon

ChatGPT can mention your Amazon products, but it mostly cannot read Amazon’s live pages, and Amazon is fighting outside agents that try to buy there for shoppers. The result is that ChatGPT sends Amazon a small share of its shopping clicks compared with Walmart, Etsy or Target, and brands that sell only on Amazon get little direct benefit from the rise of AI shopping outside Amazon.

That does not mean you should ignore ChatGPT. It means you need to know which AI you are optimizing for, and when a site you control starts to matter.

Does Amazon block ChatGPT and other AI crawlers?

Yes. In November 2025, Modern Retail confirmed that Amazon had updated its robots.txt file to block more of OpenAI’s crawlers. GPTBot, which collects training data, was already blocked. The update added ChatGPT-User, which fetches live pages when a user asks a question, and OAI-SearchBot, which powers ChatGPT’s search. Modern Retail also reported that Amazon blocks crawlers from Meta, Google and Perplexity.

The timing was pointed. OpenAI launched its shopping research feature on November 24, 2025, right before Black Friday. Tom’s Guide reported that when users asked it for Amazon picks, it could not see Amazon’s live prices, reviews or deals.

Two caveats. First, robots.txt is a request, not a lock. eMarketer pointed out it is not legally binding and can be bypassed. Second, a blocked crawler does not erase your brand from ChatGPT’s answers. The model can still describe your product from reviews, articles, Reddit threads and your own website. What it loses is fresh Amazon data: today’s price, stock and review count.

Amazon’s stated reason is accuracy. CEO Andy Jassy has said many AI agents give “inaccurate pricing, delivery and inventory information.” The commercial reason is easy to see too. Modern Retail noted that 90% of Amazon’s shoppers start their search on Amazon.com, and Amazon makes roughly $56 billion a year from advertising. Every shopping journey that starts in ChatGPT instead is a search Amazon cannot sell ads against.

How much traffic does ChatGPT send to Amazon compared with Walmart?

Very little, by the most-cited numbers. Using Similarweb data for August 2025, Modern Retail reported that:

A November 2025 follow-up put Walmart’s figure at around 36%. Treat all of these with care. They are shares of referral traffic, not of total visits, and Modern Retail noted that referral clicks are less than 5% of total site visits for these retailers. They are also a year old. We have not seen a newer public breakdown as of October 2026.

The direction is clear even if the exact numbers move: retailers that let ChatGPT in get a meaningful slice of its shopping clicks, and Amazon has chosen not to.

Can Perplexity or other AI agents still buy on Amazon?

This one has changed since most articles on it were written. Many still say Amazon “won” against Perplexity. That is out of date.

• March 10, 2026: a federal judge in San Francisco granted Amazon a preliminary injunction barring Perplexity’s Comet browser from buying on Amazon for users, as Decrypt reported. Amazon argued Comet disguised itself as a regular Chrome browser and kept going after repeated warnings.
• March 17, 2026: the Ninth Circuit paused that injunction hours before it took effect.
• August 4, 2026: the Ninth Circuit vacated the injunction. Engadget reported the court found Amazon had not shown a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act violation because Comet users, not Perplexity, start the access. Amazon said it “respectfully” disagrees and is evaluating next steps. The underlying case continues.

So as of October 2026, Comet is not barred by court order, but Amazon is clearly hostile to outside agents and the legal question is not settled. No brand should build a plan around third-party agents checking out on Amazon.

Why did Amazon buy ads on ChatGPT if it blocks ChatGPT?

In June 2026, Business Insider reported that Amazon bought sponsored placements on ChatGPT for kitchen products, as summarized by LetsDataScience. The same month, OpenAI launched its Ads Manager with product feed support.

That looks contradictory, but it is consistent. Amazon is happy to pay for a click that lands a shopper on Amazon, where Amazon controls the page, the ads and the checkout. What it resists is ChatGPT reading its catalog and answering the shopper without sending them over, or an agent completing the purchase so the shopper never sees Amazon at all. The same logic explains Buy for Me: Amazon pulls outside brands into its app while keeping outside agents away from its own.

We cover the paid side in ChatGPT ads for ecommerce brands.

What does this mean for brands that sell only on Amazon?

Mostly, it means the AI that drives your sales is Amazon’s own. Alexa for Shopping, which replaced Rufus in May 2026, answers shoppers inside Amazon using your listing, reviews and Q&A. Your listing is your AI visibility on Amazon. If you have not looked at your listing through that lens, start with optimizing for Alexa for Shopping.

It also means three practical things:

1. ChatGPT recommendations will rarely show up in your Amazon numbers. If a shopper hears about you in ChatGPT and then searches Amazon, it looks like a branded search. You will not see a “ChatGPT” referral line in Seller Central.
2. Off-Amazon reputation still feeds ChatGPT’s answers. Reviews on other sites, press, creator videos and your own website are what it can read. An Amazon-only brand with no website gives it very little to work with.
3. Your competitors who also sell on Walmart, Target or their own sites may be getting AI traffic you are not. That is the real cost of the walled garden for an Amazon-only seller.

When does a DTC site start to matter for AI traffic?

Not for every brand. Here is how we think about it.

The case for doing something is getting stronger. Adobe data for Q1 2026, reported by Decrypt, showed AI traffic to US retail sites up 393% year over year, and in March 2026 it converted 42% better than non-AI traffic. That traffic is going to sites AI can read.

What we would do this week

1. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity about your category and note whether you appear and what they say. Our AI visibility audit gives you the exact prompts.
2. Check your own site’s robots.txt. If you want AI recommendations, do not copy Amazon. Make sure GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and similar crawlers are not blocked by accident.
3. Make sure there is a page AI can cite with your product names, key specs and a link to buy, even if the buy button goes to Amazon.
4. Keep your Amazon listing strong for Alexa for Shopping. That is still where most of your AI-assisted sales will happen. Our listing optimization work starts there.
5. Do not plan around outside agents buying on Amazon until the Perplexity case is settled and Amazon’s position changes.