GLOSSARY
The agentic commerce vocabulary.
46 canonical definitions — protocols, surfaces, measurement, commerce mechanics — for teams building on the agentic layer.
Concepts
12 terms
Agentic commerce
The discipline of getting an AI agent — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Rufus, Copilot, Claude — to discover, recommend, and complete a purchase on a shopper's behalf.
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Agent surface
The screen or channel where an AI agent interacts with a shopper. The six major agent surfaces are ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Rufus, Copilot, and Claude.
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AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
The discipline of making content findable in AI answer engines — Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, ChatGPT web search, Perplexity. Distinct from GEO by focus on answer citations rather than generative discovery.
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GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
The discipline of making a brand or product surface in AI-generated content — mentioned, cited, or recommended by generative AI models. Broader than AEO by including AI-generated recommendations, not just answer citations.
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Agent identity
The verification mechanism proving that an AI agent claiming to act on a shopper's behalf actually has that authorization. Managed via TAP + AP2 + upstream trust vendors.
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Shoppable funnel
A brand-hosted landing page or micro-site designed specifically to convert agentic-referred traffic — often bypasses the main site's full navigation in favor of a streamlined purchase flow.
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Prompt-aligned landing page
A landing page whose content maps directly to a specific AI-agent-driven query — headline, subhead, and social proof aligned with the exact prompt the shopper asked.
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llms.txt
A structured text file at the root of a domain (like robots.txt) that provides AI models with a curated map of the site's most cite-worthy content and explicit AI-training/citation permissions.
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Canonicalization
The process by which an AI agent decides which brand's version of a product is the 'canonical' one to recommend when multiple brands sell similar SKUs. Built over time via content depth + review + external authority.
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Structured data
Machine-readable metadata embedded in a web page (usually as Schema.org JSON-LD) that tells AI agents and search engines exactly what the page is about — product, article, FAQ, breadcrumb, review, etc.
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Core Web Vitals
Google's page-experience signals — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), Interaction to Next Paint (INP). Directly affect rank in Google surfaces including Gemini + AI Overviews.
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Faugentic
Systems that market themselves as agentic but require significant human intervention to function. A skepticism check on category hype.
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Agent surfaces
11 terms
ChatGPT shopping
OpenAI's commerce surface inside ChatGPT — product cards in the answer carousel + Instant Checkout via ACP.
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Amazon Rufus
Amazon's in-app AI shopping assistant. Launched 2024; now GA across US + UK + DE + ES + FR + IT + IN + JP. Powered by Amazon Nova.
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Alexa+
Amazon's rebooted agentic Alexa. $19.99/mo (free for Prime). ~15M subs as of Q2 2026. Voice-first, top-1-winner-take dynamic.
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Buy for Me
Amazon's outbound-agent feature — Rufus can complete purchases on external retailer sites (500+ partners as of Q1 2026). Amazon-mediated checkout using stored Amazon credentials.
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Gemini shopping
Google's agentic commerce surfaces — Gemini chat, AI Overviews in Search, Buy for Me. All powered by the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).
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Perplexity shopping
Perplexity's commerce surface + Instant Buy (PayPal partnership). High-intent shopper, higher AOV, deep review weighting.
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Microsoft Copilot shopping
Microsoft Copilot's commerce capabilities — inside Windows, Microsoft 365, and Bing. Enterprise + work-context-heavy shopper mix.
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Claude shopping
Anthropic Claude's emerging commerce capabilities — technical + prosumer shopper base. Small volume, high engagement, low competition window.
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Amazon Business agentic commerce
Amazon Business's agentic layer — Amazon Q surfaces vendor recommendations, negotiates volume pricing, orchestrates multi-vendor orders for the $50B+ B2B marketplace.
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Browser agent
An AI agent embedded in or replacing a shopper's web browser — operates the browser to research, evaluate, and complete purchases with minimal human intervention. Perplexity Comet is the leading example.
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AI Overviews
Google's AI-generated summary that sits above traditional search results for many queries — increasingly the primary shopping surface for Google-native shoppers.
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Protocols
6 terms
ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol)
OpenAI + Stripe's open protocol for agent-initiated commerce. Powers ChatGPT Instant Checkout and Copilot-adjacent commerce. Enables in-conversation purchase completion without the shopper leaving the agent.
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UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol)
Google + Shopify + retail-consortium open protocol for agent commerce, endorsed at NRF 2026 by 20+ retailers including Walmart, Target, Wayfair, Etsy, and (as of Q1 2026) Amazon.
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AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol)
A cross-industry protocol standardizing how AI agents authenticate, authorize, and settle payments on behalf of shoppers. Payments-layer counterpart to ACP and UCP.
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MCP (Model Context Protocol)
Anthropic-authored open standard for connecting AI assistants to external data sources, tools, and services. Widely adopted across AI vendors; foundation for tool-use-based commerce.
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A2A (Agent-to-Agent Protocol)
Protocol for agent-to-agent communication — how one AI agent hands off, negotiates, or coordinates with another. Enables multi-agent commerce flows (e.g., a shopping agent talking to a fulfillment agent).
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TAP (Trusted Agent Protocol)
Protocol for verifying agent identity + authorization scope in commerce transactions. The trust-and-verification layer for agentic commerce.
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Commerce mechanics
10 terms
Agent merchant of record
The party legally responsible for the transaction and the customer relationship when an agent closes a sale. Determines who owns the customer data, refund handling, and margin capture.
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Instant Checkout
OpenAI's in-conversation checkout flow, powered by ACP + Stripe. Enables a shopper to complete a purchase without leaving the ChatGPT conversation.
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Agentic checkout
The general pattern of completing a purchase inside an AI agent conversation, without the shopper leaving to a merchant's website. Includes ACP Instant Checkout, UCP Buy for Me, and equivalents.
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Scoped payment token
A single-transaction payment authorization used by an AI agent — limited to a specific merchant, amount, and time window. The primary payment primitive for agentic commerce.
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AI-Sponsored Placements
Paid placement in AI agent answers — the agentic-era replacement for Sponsored Products and Google Shopping ads. Google's Direct Offers is the largest current example.
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ChatGPT Merchant Center
OpenAI's product-feed submission channel — the direct path for brands to submit product catalogs to ChatGPT's shopping subsystem.
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Virtual card
A single-use or scoped-use payment card issued to an AI agent for one specific transaction. Provides tokenization, spend limits, and audit trail for agentic purchases.
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Direct Offers
Google's AI-native ad unit inside Gemini and AI Overviews — the agentic-era replacement for Shopping ads. Announced at NRF 2026.
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Product feed
A structured export of product data (title, price, availability, attributes, images) that a merchant submits to an agent surface for indexing. Base-layer infrastructure for AI Search Visibility.
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Unified checkout
The pattern where transactions complete inside every major AI agent surface without kicking the shopper to an external browser. Requires ACP + UCP + protocol translation.
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Measurement
7 terms
Citation Rank
Tru Commerce's flagship AI Share-of-Voice score — measures how often and where a brand appears when AI agents answer category-relevant shopper questions.
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AI Share of Voice
The share of relevant AI shopping recommendations in a category that mention a given brand. A weighted composite across the six major agent surfaces.
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Visibility Score
Composite score summarizing a brand's presence across all six major AI agent surfaces on a 0-100 scale. Used for cross-brand and cross-category benchmarking.
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DACT (Dark Agentic Commerce Traffic)
AI-driven shopper traffic that GA4 and legacy analytics cannot identify, silently bucketing as 'Direct.' Typical brand gap: 4-8× between measured and actual AI revenue.
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Server-side AI attribution
Server-side infrastructure that identifies AI-driven traffic without relying on the HTTP Referer header. Three-signal architecture: fingerprinting, query-param negotiation, tracking pixel.
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Agent attribution
The practice of measuring which AI agent surface drove a given shopper session or transaction. Made difficult by referrer-stripping; solved by server-side attribution layers.
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Agent-driven revenue
Revenue attributable to shoppers who arrived via or completed transactions inside an AI agent surface. Distinct from AI-referred traffic in that it emphasizes closed-loop revenue.
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