Rufus and AI search on Amazon: how to prepare your catalogue

More and more Amazon shoppers don’t type “steel water bottle 1 litre”. They ask “which water bottle keeps water cold for a full day’s hike?”. The answer comes from Rufus, the AI-powered shopping assistant. Here’s how it works, what changes for sellers and what to fix in your catalogue so your products show up in its answers.

What Rufus is and where it’s available

Rufus is Amazon’s conversational assistant. The shopper types a question, Rufus replies with an explanation and a selection of products, and lets them ask follow-up questions. It started in the United States, then came to the United Kingdom and, at the end of 2024, to Italy, Germany, France and Spain, initially as a beta in the Amazon app and rolled out to users gradually. Availability and features change often, so it’s worth checking for yourself how it looks on your marketplace today.

Rufus draws on the Amazon catalogue (titles, bullets, descriptions, attributes, A+ Content), reviews, customer questions and information gathered outside Amazon as well. It doesn’t read hidden search terms the way a keyword engine does, and it doesn’t only look at exact term matches.

How search is changing

With the classic search bar, shoppers translate their need into keywords. With Rufus they state the need directly. That shifts the work onto the listings.

Typical questions fall into a few groups: who or what a product is good for, differences between two products, whether it suits a particular situation, what other customers say about a specific aspect. If your listing doesn’t contain the information to answer, Rufus looks for it elsewhere, often in competitors’ listings.

What to prepare in your catalogue

You don’t need to rewrite everything from scratch. You need to fill the gaps. These are the areas we work on first.

Complete attributes

Structured attributes (material, dimensions, recommended age, compatibility, certifications, ingredients, recommended use) are data an AI can read without ambiguity. Many catalogues have fewer than half of them filled in. It’s the least visible work and often the one that pays off most, for the filters in classic search too.

Copy that answers use cases

Bullets and A+ Content should say explicitly who the product is for, in which situations it works best and when it isn’t the right choice. Phrases like “suitable for sensitive skin” or “machine washable at 30 degrees” are useful to a person and to an AI. Slogans like “superior quality” tell neither of them anything.

Answers to recurring doubts

Collect doubts from reviews, customer questions and return reasons, then answer them in the listing. If lots of people ask whether a product fits a certain space, the measurement needs to be written out clearly, not just drawn in an image.

Reviews

Rufus summarises what customers say. If reviews keep complaining about the same flaw, that flaw will end up in the answers. The fix here isn’t the listing copy but the product, the packaging or the instructions. Official programmes like Amazon Vine help you get reviews on new products within the rules.

Readable images

AI systems increasingly analyse images too. Clear text in infographics, well-written measurements and the product shown in use help both the shopper and the system understand what you sell. The same key information must also be there as text, though. An image showing capacity in millilitres helps the person looking, but a completed capacity attribute is what allows an answer with no margin for error.

Beyond Amazon: ChatGPT and other AI tools

Many people start looking for a product outside Amazon, by asking ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity. These assistants build their answers from public sources: brand websites, reviews, articles, marketplace listings. For a brand, that means consistent and complete information matters everywhere.

• Product specifications should be the same on your website, on Amazon and on other channels.
• The brand website should have product pages with real text, not just images.
• Well-written FAQs, on the website and in listings, are a source AI tools readily use.
• Reviews and mentions on independent sites shape how the brand is perceived in the answers.

Work on the Amazon catalogue and work on the rest of your online presence reinforce each other. We treat them together in our Rufus and AI search optimisation service.

How to check whether your catalogue is ready

The simplest test is also the most useful: ask Rufus the questions a shopper would ask.

1. Write down ten real questions about your category, taken from reviews, customer service and sales staff.
2. Ask them to Rufus in the app, on the marketplace where you sell.
3. Note which products appear and what Rufus says about yours.
4. If an answer is wrong or incomplete, find the point in the listing where the information is missing.
5. Fix it, wait a few weeks and ask the same questions again.

Rufus’s answers vary, so don’t read them as a precise ranking. Repeated over time, though, they show clear trends: which products get mentioned, with which arguments, and where competitors are described better.

Mistakes to avoid

• Stuffing copy with artificial questions and answers just to catch long phrases. It makes the listing harder to read and guarantees nothing.
• Leaving key information only in images, such as measurements or compatibility.
• Neglecting listings in other languages: Rufus answers in the shopper’s language, and rough machine translation shows in the answers.
• Ignoring negative reviews in the hope of making up for them with copy.

Where to start

Pick your five most important products and compare the attributes you’ve filled in with those available for the category. Then ask Rufus your customers’ three most common questions and read what it says. Whatever is missing or wrong is your first list of changes. If you need help with copy and images, our Creative Studio for listings and content works on exactly this.

Frequently asked questions