What is CatalogSignal?

CatalogSignal is an AI commerce readiness platform that measures how discoverable your catalog is in AI-powered search and recommendation environments. When shoppers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity what to buy, we measure whether those systems can find, understand, and accurately represent your products. We score readiness across 16 signals and produce a Commerce Eligibility Index (CEI).

What is the Commerce Eligibility Index (CEI)?

CEI Diagnose is a 10 to 14 business day assessment that scores your catalog across 16 signals and 5 pillars, benchmarks key gaps, and delivers an executive action plan with product-level evidence.

What is CEI Activate?

CEI Activate is the remediation product. It turns diagnostic findings into install-ready outputs such as schema scripts, PIM-importable files, and prioritized copy and attribute fixes.

What is CEI Protect?

CEI Protect is the ongoing quality gate. It checks new and updated products before publish against your brand baseline and flags issues as pass, warn, or fail.

Do we need to run CEI before Activate or Protect?

Yes. Activate and Protect depend on the CEI baseline to determine what to fix and which quality standards to enforce.

Is this a one-time assessment or an ongoing service?

Both. CEI Diagnose can be purchased as a one-time engagement. CEI Activate and CEI Protect extend that work into remediation and ongoing governance, with recurring benchmarking and monitoring.

What deliverables are included with Activate?

Typical deliverables include schema markup recommendations, attribute completion files, terminology normalization outputs, and SKU-prioritized content briefs.

How does Protect fit into our workflow?

Protect is designed to run before publish so merchandising, product data, and content teams can catch quality regressions before products go live.

Is this an SEO project?

No. SEO is designed to improve rankings and clicks in traditional search. CatalogSignal operates at the product data layer beneath SEO. AI systems do not simply rank pages. They read, interpret, and synthesize product information. If your structured data is incomplete, your descriptions are generic, or your catalog is hard to crawl, AI may skip your products or misrepresent them.

Do you replace our PIM, CMS, or SEO stack?

No. CatalogSignal strengthens AI readiness at the data layer and provides outputs your existing systems and teams can apply.

Who is CatalogSignal for?

CatalogSignal is built for brands, retailers, and commerce teams that want to understand whether their products are discoverable and accurately represented in AI-driven search and recommendation environments.

How much access do you need?

For a baseline assessment, none. We crawl your public site the same way AI systems do. For deeper analysis, we ingest a CSV or product feed through our secure portal. No API keys, admin access, or code changes are required.

What is required from my team?

A 30-minute kickoff and an optional catalog export in CSV or feed format are enough for the initial assessment. Monthly benchmarking can then track progress. For remediation, we deliver a prioritized roadmap your existing teams can execute. If you need additional implementation support, we can recommend trusted resources.

How do you treat competitor data?

Competitors are evaluated using publicly available data only, including crawlable site content, AI model queries, reviews, and brand mentions. No client-provided data is used in competitor evaluations.

What does the assessment include?

You receive a detailed report, an executive assessment, and an agency brief. Deliverables include your CEI score, signal-by-signal breakdown, competitive positioning, and a prioritized remediation roadmap.

How long does it take?

Initial CEI Diagnose and first remediation roadmap are delivered within 10 to 14 business days of data receipt. Ongoing benchmarking begins after setup.

Do you test against real AI models?

Yes. Every evaluation includes live query testing against Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini using 100+ product-discovery questions per model. We measure inclusion, prominence, accuracy, and cross-model agreement.

Do you measure hallucinations?

Yes. If AI invents features your product does not have, misstates pricing, or attributes competitor specifications to your products, our Integrity pillar captures it. Hallucination rate is one of the 16 signals.

How do you handle our data?

Client data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Catalog feeds are used only for your evaluation and are never shared, used for training, or applied to competitor analysis.

Can we see a sample report?

Yes. Contact us to request an anonymized sample scorecard showing CEI breakdowns, supporting evidence, competitive positioning, and remediation recommendations.

What does zero-click mean for my business?

Zero-click means shoppers increasingly get answers directly from search and AI interfaces without visiting a website. Your products need to appear accurately in those answers, not only rank in traditional search.