Product descriptions AI can quote: substance over sales copy
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Short answer
An assistant building an answer needs sentences it can lift: what the product is made of, what it fits, how it behaves, who it suits. Adjectives do not survive the trip. The feed spec allows 5,000 plain-text characters, most products use a fraction of it, and the fix is stating facts a buyer would ask about, in complete sentences, once.
What an assistant does with your description
It reads the description as source material for an answer someone else asked. OpenAI's docs say ChatGPT may generate simplified product titles and descriptions from what it receives, which means your copy is input to a rewrite, not the final display. Facts survive rewrites. Mood does not.
Premium quality, elevated essentials, timeless design: none of it answers a constraint. 100% linen, 180gsm, machine washable, true to size: all of it does. The uncomfortable rule is that a description works for AI in proportion to how much of it would survive being read aloud by a skeptical friend.
The duplicate copy problem fails twice now
Pasting the manufacturer's description means your product page says exactly what fifty other stores say. Under classic SEO that was a ranking problem. Under AI shopping it is worse: when every candidate offers identical text, your listing contains nothing that makes it the better answer, and the assistant has no reason to pick your store over the one with more reviews.
Rewriting supplier copy is dull work, which is why it does not happen at scale by hand. It is also mechanical enough to delegate: ground the rewrite in the product's own data, keep the facts, replace the boilerplate, and approve each result. That approve-each-result step is the difference between fixing the problem and the autopilot rewrites that made the category's worst reviews.
A structure that works, in four moves
No template survives every category, but this order does: what it is, in one sentence with the key attributes. What it is made of and how it behaves, the facts. What it fits, works with, or suits, the constraints. What buyers ask before purchasing, answered plainly.
That last move is the underused one. Real buyer questions, the size chart question, the compatibility question, the is-it-actually-waterproof question, answered in the description, give the assistant exactly the sentence it needs when a shopper asks the same thing. Third-party research from Profound in June 2026 found Q&A content on product pages correlating with higher ranking, which is the same finding from the other direction.
Length, honestly
The spec allows 5,000 characters and plain text. That is a ceiling, not a target. A description earns its length by adding facts, and padding to seem thorough adds noise an assistant has to dig through.
The practical floor: a description under 200 characters almost never answers a single buyer question, and it is the most common failure the score finds. Two substantial paragraphs covering the four moves above lands most products between 400 and 1,200 characters, which is room enough for every fact that matters.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use AI to write my product descriptions?
Yes, with two conditions: ground it in the product's real data so it cannot invent facts, and review each one before it ships. Generic AI copy at scale reproduces the duplicate-copy problem with different words. Approved, grounded rewrites fix it.
Do keywords in descriptions still matter?
Terms matter as facts, not as repetition. An assistant matching linen dress needs linen present, once, as a true statement. Density tricks address a ranking model that is not the one reading your page anymore.
Should the description repeat what is in the title?
The key attributes, yes, in sentence form. Title and description travel separately through feeds and rewrites, so each should stand alone. That is repetition across fields, not repetition within one.
What about HTML formatting in descriptions?
The feed spec specifies plain text, so structure that lives only in markup may not travel. Keep the substance in sentences, and use formatting for the human reading the page rather than counting on it reaching the assistant.
Sources
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