15 press spaces to pitch to for AI shopping authority for eCommerce brands

Insights
Written By Cecilie Olsen

If you've been paying attention to how people shop online in 2026, you'll have noticed something shift. Consumers are increasingly turning to AI tools — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, and more — to ask questions like "what's the best slow cooker under £100?" or "which skincare brand is good for sensitive skin?"

And here's what that means for your eCommerce or product brand: the products that get recommended by AI are the products that have been written about — by credible, editorial press.

This is the new frontier of PR. Press placements in high-authority publications are now one of the most powerful ways to signal to AI systems that your brand and products are trustworthy, relevant, and worth recommending.

The good news? There are dedicated shopping sections across major UK titles that exist precisely to feature products like yours. Get into them, and you're building the kind of editorial footprint that AI discovery tools draw from.

Here are 15 press spaces worth pitching for AI shopping authority.

1. Esquire — Style

Esquire's Style section is a go-to for premium menswear, grooming, and lifestyle product coverage. If your brand has a male-leaning audience or sits in a lifestyle-adjacent category, this is a high-authority placement with serious domain weight — that’s the kind of editorial signal that AI tools treat as a credibility marker.

2. Good Homes — Best Buys

Good Homes is a trusted name in UK interiors media, and its Best Buys section is a solid destination for homeware and lifestyle product coverage. It's a practical, product-focused section that reaches an engaged audience of home shoppers — and a good fit for brands looking to build credibility in the interiors space.

3. GQ — GQ Recommends

GQ Recommends is a popular and desirable shopping destinations in UK men's media. The editorial team curates fashion, grooming, tech, and lifestyle picks — and a GQ recommendation carries weight, both with consumers and with AI discovery tools crawling high-authority fashion and lifestyle domains.

4. Grazia — Shopping

Grazia's shopping section reaches a fashion-forward female audience who are active, trend-led shoppers. Coverage here tends to drive real traffic and brand searches — and because Grazia ranks consistently for fashion and lifestyle queries, it's a strong authority signal for AI systems looking to surface relevant product recommendations.

5. Who What Wear — Shopping

Who What Wear's shopping section is a go-to destination for fashion-forward shoppers, covering everything from high street finds to luxury picks. Trend-led and editorially driven, it's trusted by a style-conscious audience who look to it to cut through the noise and discover the hottest new picks to what's worth buying.

6. Ideal Home — What to Buy

Ideal Home's What to Buy features is a go-to product-recommendation destination in UK interiors media. The site has exceptional SEO performance for home product queries, meaning a placement here is likely to be surfaced — both in traditional search and in AI-generated answers.

7. The Independent — IndyBest

IndyBest is one of the UK's most trusted and widely-read product review sections. It covers everything from kitchen appliances to skincare to outdoor gear, with rigorous editorial standards and high traffic.

For AI shopping authority, this is likely one of the highest-value placements you can get — The Independent has enormous domain authority and IndyBest content surfaces constantly in AI-generated product recommendations.

8. The Guardian — The Filter

The Guardian's The Filter is the paper's digital curated shopping and product discovery section. Given The Guardian's extraordinary domain authority and reputation as a trusted editorial source, a placement here is among the most powerful signals you can generate for AI shopping discovery. AI tools trained to prioritise credible, journalistic sources will frequently draw on Guardian content.

9. Livingetc — Expert Advice

Livingetc sits at the more design-led, aspirational end of UK interiors media. Its Expert Advice section is a useful space for brands that can offer a genuine point of view or solve a specific home design problem — positioning your product in an authoritative context rather than a straight product roundup.

10. Marie Claire — Shopping

Marie Claire's shopping section is a trusted destination for fashion and beauty product recommendations, with a loyal, engaged readership. For fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands targeting women, Marie Claire carries real brand-building weight — and its strong digital presence means coverage is likely to be indexed and surfaced by AI tools well beyond its publication date.

11. Metro — Shopping

Metro UK - shopping features

Credit: metro.co.uk

Metro's shopping features reaches a broad, everyday audience — which is exactly why it's valuable. It covers accessible, trend-led products across categories and drives significant traffic. Metro's domain authority is high, and its shopping content is likely to be frequently picked up in AI search responses, particularly for mass-market product queries.

12. Mother & Baby — Reviews

Parents don't browse casually, they research carefully. For brands in the baby, parenting, or family space, Mother & Baby Reviews is a trusted and long-standing magazine. Parents searching for safe, trusted product recommendations are a high-intent audience — and AI tools responding to parenting product queries are likely to regularly surface content from trusted parenting media like Mother & Baby.

13. Red (Online) — Shopping

Red Online has a reputation for speaking to a thoughtful, style-conscious female audience. Its shopping edits tend to favour quality and curation over fast-trend picks, making it a useful placement for fashion and lifestyle brands that want to be seen in a more considered editorial context.

14. SheerLuxe — Shopping

SheerLuxe is a ‘newer’ digital publication to some of the titles listed in this blog post, but has managed to build a loyal and commercially engaged audiences in UK digital media. Its shopping edits is trusted by readers who actively buy what the title recommends. For premium and lifestyle brands, a SheerLuxe placement is a strong signal of quality and desirability — and its content consistently appears in search results for fashion and lifestyle product queries.

SheerLuxe has grown well beyond its original audience. Alongside its core readership, it now reaches a younger generation through LuxeGirl content, a more mature audience via The Gold Edition, and men through its sister platform SLMan.

With over 6 million people reached and 800,000+ newsletter subscribers, its footprint is hard to ignore.

While the core audience is firmly established, SheerLuxe specifically targets a younger "pre-SL generation" via their LuxeGirl content, and a more mature audience through The Gold Edition.

15. Evening Standard — ES Best

ES Best is the Evening Standard's dedicated product recommendation section and one of the strongest eCommerce-focused editorial destinations in UK media. Coverage in ES Best drives measurable traffic and sales — and given the Evening Standard's domain authority, placements here are regularly surfaced by AI tools responding to product and shopping queries.


Turning press into AI discovery

These 15 press spaces aren't just good for media coverage in the traditional sense. They're your building blocks for AI shopping authority.

When AI tools are asked to recommend products, they draw on the editorial landscape — the publications that have covered your brand, the context in which you've been mentioned, and the credibility signals that come with being featured in trusted media. A consistent presence across sections like these tells AI systems: this brand is real, recommended, and relevant.

The pitch that works for AI shopping authority is the same pitch that works for good editorial coverage: a genuine product, a clear story and a compelling reason why it belongs in this particular section right now.

Start with the publications and features closest to your category, nail your pitch and build on from there.

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Cecilie Olsen
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