Perplexity answers shopping questions with products, and merchants can give it their product data through its merchant program. What Perplexity then shows is Perplexity's decision.
The Perplexity shopping feed channel type builds that product data: a channel whose columns follow the Google Shopping product specification, which is what Perplexity reads.
What setup does — and doesn't — get you#
Being straight about this matters more than the setup steps, because two of the four things below change whether you should set this up at all:
- Creating this channel prepares a feed. It does not enroll your store. Joining Perplexity's merchant program is an application you make, followed by business verification. Renable can't submit it for you, and until it's approved this channel is a prepared file waiting for somewhere to go. Never read "the feed published" as "my products are in Perplexity". [VERIFY: the current URL of Perplexity's merchant application and what the form asks for.]
- The program is free, and it is US-focused. Perplexity's own announcement says the merchant program is free for merchants. What's consistently reported everywhere else — though Perplexity doesn't spell it out in one place — is that both the merchant side and the shopping experience are United States only as of mid-2026. If you sell into the Nordics or the rest of Europe, that is the first thing to weigh: this may simply not be open to you yet. [VERIFY: whether Perplexity's merchant program has opened outside the US.]
- There is no advertising on Perplexity. This is the question people ask first, and the answer is a plain no rather than a "not through Renable". Perplexity tested sponsored placements and then discontinued advertising, with no product-ads program, no paid shopping placement, and nothing to bid on. Some third-party guides still describe a Perplexity ads manager; that content is out of date. Everything here is organic, and there is no paid path to change what Perplexity shows.
- If your store is on Shopify, you may already be covered. Shopify Catalog automatically syndicates a Shopify store's product data to connected AI platforms, Perplexity among them — with no feed work at all. So if you're on Shopify, the honest question isn't "how do I get in", it's whether you want explicit control of what goes out. That's what this channel adds: you choose the fields, the rules decide the values, your enriched content flows in, and it publishes alongside every other destination from one place.
One more thing that isn't part of the channel but matters as much. Perplexity's crawler, PerplexityBot, reads your product pages directly. Structured data on those pages — schema.org Product and Offer markup — and allowing PerplexityBot in your robots.txt are what that path depends on, and they work whether or not you're in the merchant program. For a merchant who isn't approved, or isn't in the US, it's the only path there is. It lives on your store rather than in Renable, so it's worth raising with whoever runs your site.
Creating the channel#
From a project's Channels section, create a channel and pick the Perplexity shopping feed type. It seeds:
- The Google Shopping columns —
id,title,description,link,image_link,availability,price,sale_price,brand,condition, the identifiers (gtin,mpn),item_group_id,google_product_category, andproduct_type— bound to your product data, under Google'sg:names. If you already run a Google Shopping channel this one will look almost identical, and that's the point: Perplexity publishes no feed specification of its own, so what it reads is Google's. - Two starter rules — availability drops to
out_of_stockwhen a product's stock hits zero or its content is incomplete, and sale price fills only when a product is actually discounted. - No custom label columns, unlike the Google and Microsoft channel types. Custom labels exist to segment ad campaigns, and there are no campaigns on Perplexity to segment. You can still add them from the Fields tab if you want them for your own bookkeeping.
On the Settings tab, the Used for card shows the channel declared for Perplexity with its always-on Perplexity shopping use — that's what drives the field checks. Perplexity has no add-ons at all, and that's a statement about Perplexity rather than something still to come: with no advertising, there is no ad format for an extra chip to describe. There's no Used as choice either, because nothing documents a supplementary-feed concept for Perplexity.
Where the required fields come from is worth knowing exactly. Perplexity publishes no field list, so nothing here is Perplexity telling you what it needs. Almost every required field on this channel is what Google's specification requires — id, title, description, link, image link, availability and price — which is the best available answer precisely because Google's spec is what Perplexity reads.
The one exception is the barcode column, gtin, which Renable marks required here although Google itself only recommends it. That is Renable's own judgement, not Perplexity's rule: a shopping answer has to work out that your listing and another shop's listing are the same product, and the barcode is the only field in the feed that can settle it. So when Renable says this field is required for Perplexity, read it as Renable asking for it on Perplexity's behalf. Products without a barcode still publish — you'll see the gap reported as a fill rate and, once enough products are missing one, as a warning on the channel — but nothing is blocked or rejected.
Delivering the feed#
Perplexity accepts two routes, and you'll usually start with the first:
- A hosted feed URL that Perplexity fetches — the zero-configuration route, and the one the channel is ready for the moment you publish. See Connecting a channel to Meta, Google, or TikTok for where to find the URL.
- An SFTP push, using credentials Perplexity issues during merchant onboarding. Once you have them, fill them in under SFTP delivery on the Settings tab and Renable pushes the same file after every update — see SFTP delivery.
A few details worth knowing:
- The output stays on XML. Unlike the ChatGPT and Reddit channel types, this one doesn't preset a different format: the XML Renable writes is RSS 2.0 carrying Google's namespace, which is the form described for Perplexity. CSV and TSV are fine too, and Renable won't warn about any of the three.
- Compression is one of the things Perplexity doesn't document. If you turn on the Compress feed file (.gz) switch, Renable won't warn you — but it won't tell you Perplexity accepts it either, because no source says so. Ask during onboarding if it matters. [VERIFY: whether Perplexity's ingestion reads gzipped feeds.]
- There's no published refresh schedule. Perplexity documents no fetch cadence, so Renable won't tell you one — if the timing matters to you, ask during onboarding rather than assuming it matches Google's or Meta's. [VERIFY: how often Perplexity re-fetches a hosted feed URL.]
Checking the output#
- Preview tab → Source view shows the exact file content per product.
- The Fields tab marks the required fields and their fill rates from the latest render. Seven of them are Google's — id, title, description, link, image link, availability, and price — plus
gtin, which is Renable's own call for this channel. gtinis the row worth watching. A barcode is what any shopping surface uses to tell your listing of a product apart from another seller's, which is exactly the job a shopping answer has to do. The Fields tab's fill rate on that row is how you see what share of your catalog carries one — and a low rate is a real answer to "why aren't my products showing up", not a formatting problem.- Render results and warnings show on the Activity tab — see Channel events and troubleshooting.