What you control
- Identity — brand, model, variant, GTIN and MPN, stated in the page.
- Readability — whether the facts are in the HTML a crawler receives.
- The destination — one stable product URL, declared canonical.
- Provenance — which source each fact came from, and when it changed.
Each of these has a checklist: /checklists/product-page-ai-readiness.
What you influence
- Retailer and marketplace listings — through the data you send them. When
their numbers disagree with yours, a model resolves the disagreement.
- Third-party descriptions — reviews and comparisons you can correct only
by asking. In answers about real products, 44% of citations went to press, review and reference pages (study).
What is out of reach
- Which sources a model prefers for a given question.
- When a model or its search index updates. Behaviour changes under stable
names; this is why every observation needs the model name and the date.
- Ranking. There is no position to buy or earn. Anyone promising one is
selling something other than what they describe.
Why the map matters
Work spent on the third column is wasted; work on the first is the only part you can finish. The rules for telling a real effect from a coincidence are at /evidence.