Because LLM Discovery Beta Onboarding Checklist

To help you get set up smoothly, here’s a quick checklist of what we’ll need from you this week — plus what to expect from us.

✅ What We Need from You

Please complete these quick steps by end of day Thursday so we can get your content live and share your visibility snapshot Friday:

1. 🔗 Share Your Product URLs

• Send us your top 5 best-selling product URLs that you’d like to feature in the beta.

  • What if my product variants are setup as separate URLs, will each variant will need its own Markdown page?

  • Yes, if each variant has its own URL, each will need its own Markdown page

    • Some Shopify stores use separate product pages for each variant (e.g., different colors or fits).

    • Since each has a unique URL, each one will require its own Markdown page to be referenced individually in the llms.txt.

  • If your variants are on a single URL, however, one Markdown page is enough

    • In standard Shopify setups, variants (like color or size) are selectable within a single product URL.

    • In these cases, only one Markdown page is needed, since the LLM crawler will be directed to the shared URL.

• Optional: Share up to 30 additional products (or a link to a collection or category) - or let uc choose for you. We expect to quickly expand to cover more of your product catalog in the next week or two.

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2. 📸 Send a Screenshot of Historical LLM Traffic

To help us measure how your AI-powered traffic grows during the beta, please export a daily breakdown of LLM traffic from the past 6 months.

You can pull this from ShopifyQL Editor or your analytics platform of choice (Google Analytics, Klaviyo, etc.).

Look for these UTM sources:

Platform	UTM Source Example(s)
ChatGPT	chatgpt.com
Perplexity	perplexity

Where to check:

• Google Analytics (GA4) → Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition → Filter by Session source

• Shopify Analytics → Analytics > Reports > Sessions by referrer

• Klaviyo / Other Tools → Filter by UTM source or click source

🛒 ShopifyQL Instructions

If you’re using ShopifyQL, here’s an example query you can use in the ShopifyQL Editor to export daily sessions from LLM sources:

FROM sales SHOW total_sales GROUP BY product_title, billing_country TIMESERIES day SINCE -180d

Modify the FROM and SHOW clauses if you’re working with traffic or sessions instead of sales.

📘 Need help? ShopifyQL Editor Docs →

📤 What to Send

• A CSV export or screenshot showing daily sessions or traffic from the past 180 days

• Ideally broken out by source (utm_source) and day

• Send via email or Slack

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3. 🆚 Provide 3–5 Competitor URLs

We’ll use these to benchmark your brand’s visibility score inside LLM’s like ChatGPT at the start of the beta.

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4. 🌐 Subdomain Setup

We’ll be hosting your LLM-powered content on a new subdomain (e.g. chat.yourbrand.com).

If someone on your team has access to GoDaddy (or wherever your DNS is managed), we’ll walk them through this setup on a 15-min call — or see below DIY instructions if preferred.

Subdomain Setup Instructions:

How to Add a CNAME Record for Your New Subdomain

Follow these steps to add a CNAME record in your DNS for the new subdomain llms of your brand's domain:

1. Log in to Your DNS Provider

   Access the platform where your domain's DNS is managed (e.g., GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Namecheap, etc.).

2. Navigate to DNS Management

   Locate the DNS settings or DNS management section for your domain.

3. Add a New CNAME Record

   • Type: Select CNAME as the record type.

   • Name/Host: Enter provided name

   • Value/Points To/Target: Enter provided value

   • TTL: Use the default TTL value, or set it to 1 hour if required.

4. Save the Record

   Click Save or Add Record to finalize the changes.

5. Verify Your Changes

   Depending on your DNS provider, the changes may take some time to propagate (usually within a few minutes to 24 hours). You can verify the setup using tools like DNS Checker by checking the CNAME record for llms.yourbrand.com.

If you encounter any issues, reach out the Because team for assistance.

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5. 🤖 Allow AI Crawlers (like ChatGPT and Perplexity)

Most websites already allow AI crawlers like OpenAI’s by default — so no action is needed unless your site is actively blocking them.

If you want to double-check or ensure they have access, follow these steps:

🔍 Step 1: Check Your robots.txt File

Visit the following URL for your site:

yourdomain.com/robots.txt

Look for any lines that may be blocking bots. For example:

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

or

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

If you see anything like this, your site may be blocking AI crawlers.

✅ Step 2: Allow Access AI Crawlers

To ensure your content is discoverable by AI tools, update your robots.txt file to explicitly allow the following crawlers:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
User-agent: *
Allow: /

📘 Learn more from OpenAI’s official documentation.

🛍️ Using Shopify? Shopify auto-generates a robots.txt file for your store, but it can be customized following these steps.

No robots.txt? No problem! If this file doesn’t exist, AI crawlers will generally assume they’re allowed to access your site.

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📦 What You’ll Receive from Us

Within 48 hours of your go live, we’ll send you:

• 📊 Your current visibility score compared to your selected competitors

• 🧠 A quick explanation of how it’s calculated

• 📈 Ongoing updates as new content goes live and traffic builds

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If you have any questions or would like to do your setup asynchronously, just let us know — we’re happy to send everything over via Slack or email.

Let’s get started! 🚀

— The Because Team

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