AEO fundamentals
Why should brands selling in the US pay attention to Meta Muse?
Liam Hwang5 min read
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Meta Muse can settle a purchase without the shopper ever visiting your site. The shopper describes what they want in a chat, Muse answers with a short list of product cards, and the shopper approves the purchase there. If your product is not on that short list, nothing in your analytics or referral reports shows that you were left out.
We think Muse is worth planning for now. Meta says more than 10 million people in the US and Canada set it up in its first month and a half, that growth continues to be strong, and that shopping is the most common thing people use it for.
Sources checked on 10 November 2026.
What is Meta Muse?
Muse is Meta’s personal AI agent. Meta announced it on 8 September 2026 and rolled it out in the US on iOS, Android and muse.ai (Meta, Introducing Muse, 8 September 2026). Muse can open a browser, fill in forms and act for the person, and it asks before sensitive steps such as making a purchase.
Meta gave the first usage numbers on its third-quarter earnings call (Meta, Q3 2026 earnings call transcript, 21 October 2026):
| What Meta said | Value |
|---|---|
| People who set up Muse | More than 10 million in the US and Canada, in a month and a half |
| Daily use | About 25% of people who set it up use it on a given day |
| Most common use | Shopping, used by more than a quarter of weekly users |
| Average purchase | Over $200, and Meta said this includes travel |
Stripe says that at businesses that accept Link, Muse can check out with a payment method saved in Link, that elsewhere Link issues Muse a single-use virtual card, and that the shopper approves the total in the chat (Stripe, Stripe helps Meta Muse shop with Link, 8 September 2026). At Connect on 23 September, Meta said Muse launched with access to the entire Shopify catalog and that it was adding Walmart, Best Buy, American Eagle Outfitters, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Fanatics, Gap, Michael Kors, Sephora, Ulta and Wayfair as partners, with Shop Pay and PayPal for payments (Meta, Everything We Announced at Meta Connect 2026, 23 September 2026).
How does Muse decide which products to show?
Meta has not published how Muse ranks products. One public test is Profound’s: 50 prompts from one retail category, run through one Muse instance (Profound, The era of personal agents, 2 October 2026). Profound calls its sample small and the patterns illustrative. In that test, Muse ran two searches at once for each request, one in Meta’s product catalog and one in a web browser. The catalog supplied almost all of the candidates, but most of the short list came from the browser:
Two searches feed one short list of six product cards
- Meta's product catalogAbout 60 products from 30 merchant sites
- A web browser4 products from 2 merchant sites, 3 domains visited
Why is Muse hard to see in your own data?
Profound reports that Muse conversations contain no citations and that, by default, Muse does not name the sources it visits, so you have no list of pages to check.
Orders can bypass your site as well. For Shopify stores, Shopify says shoppers can complete the order on Meta surfaces, including Muse when available, without leaving Meta, and that Google Analytics and custom pixels do not fire in Meta’s direct checkout (Shopify Help Center, Selling on Meta, read 10 November 2026). The order still appears in your Shopify admin, with Meta AI and Muse as the sales channel, but Shopify’s help page does not say you can see what the shopper asked. If Muse skips your product, no referral or citation tells you.
What can a brand do about Muse now?
- Ask Muse your buyers’ questions. Write 10 to 20 questions the way a shopper would ask them, with the situation and two or three conditions, and no brand names. Ask each one in Muse from a US account and record the product cards and the sellers. Repeat on a fixed schedule, since Profound’s test did not report whether Muse’s answers stay the same across days.
- Check that your products can become candidates. If you sell on Shopify, open Sales channels, then Agentic, and check the Meta AI and Muse settings; Shopify’s Selling on Meta help page shows where Shopify Catalog access is switched on or off. Profound recommends listing your products in Meta’s product catalog. If you sell through the retailers Meta said it was adding as partners, check that your listings there are complete.
- Put the deciding facts on the product page. Muse’s browser searches merchant sites. Price, sizes, materials, shipping and the conditions a shopper names (waterproof, under $50, arrives by Friday) should be readable in the page text, not only in an image.
- Find the stores on your short lists. In Profound’s test, most of the short list came from the browser, which typically visited three domains and returned products from two merchant sites per request. Profound did not publish which domains. The sellers on the cards in your own checks (step 1) show which stores Muse used for your questions. If they are retailers or marketplaces that sell your category, check whether your products are listed there.
- Track Muse results separately. Keep the Muse question set and its results apart from Google and ChatGPT numbers, so a change in one does not hide the others. On Shopify, orders placed in Muse through Meta’s direct checkout appear under the Meta AI and Muse sales channel.
Start with step 1. Asking Muse your buyers’ questions on a fixed schedule shows whether your products appear on its short lists, and steps 2 to 4 show where to look if they do not.