While the AI chatbot can sometimes respond with internal website links when provided in the training document using the format [Product Name](https://www.example.com/myproduct.html), it doesn’t support links to external websites.
Formatting Notes
The chatbot will sometimes — but not always — display the desired hyperlinks to internal web pages in its responses when we format the Q&A like: **FAQ: USPS says my package was delivered, but I didn't receive it.** If your tracking shows “delivered” but you haven’t received it, please [contact us](https://www.example.com/contact.html).
Limitations
The chatbot seems to ignore directives placed in document headings, such as: ###AI INSTRUCTION – DO NOT DISPLAY TO USERS### When displaying any link in this document, always use a Markdown-style hyperlink with the page title as the anchor text. Example: [My Product](https://www.example.com/my-product.html). Never show plain URLs or unlinked page titles — always format as clickable links. ### END OF AI INSTRUCTION ###
The chatbot won’t display images from our website in its responses.
It also won’t display external links (e.g., to another manufacturer’s product) in its responses.
Although we understand the reasons - such as licensing restrictions and safeguarding the host site’s business - this limitation can reduce the chatbot’s overall usefulness.
In our case, about 30% of non-professional buyers choose the wrong product. When someone describes an incompatible use case, we’d like the chatbot to link to an affordable alternative sold at major hardware stores. This could reduce confusion, returns, and support requests.
It might also benefit affiliate marketers, if they could configure the bot to include affiliate links and generate revenue.
However we’re not sure if this feature would create too many support headaches.
We’d love to hear comments from anyone else who could use this feature, and from Elfsight support.
I believe my feature request is fundamentally different from the existing wishlist item it was merged into just now.
If appropriate, could you please restore it to its own thread?
Explanation:
We want to clarify that we’re not requesting the AI chatbot to crawl the web or pull in external content that could override our training documents. In fact, we’d prefer that such a feature not be implemented, to ensure the chatbot continues to rely solely on our training documents.
We tested a competing AI chatbot that relies on both uploaded training documents and content it crawled from our website. The results were unreliable - the competitor’s chatbot often gave potentially harmful advice, likely because it was overwhelmed by the volume of site content, failed to distinguish between the different constraints for our various products, and did not prioritize the uploaded training documents as instructed.
Rather, we’re requesting the ability to include explicit external links within the training document, so the AI can reply with links we’ve chosen to trusted third-party resources.
For example, the link below was included in our original .txt training document, but the AI ignored it:
**FAQ: Can a sewer jetter go through multiple drain elbows or turns?** While sewer jetters clean more thoroughly than plumber’s snakes, they can’t navigate as many tight-radius elbows and fittings deep in the drain. If you’re cleaning a 3" ID or smaller drain, you should first try a low-cost [50 Ft hand auger](https://www.google.com/search?q=Kobalt+1%2F2-in+x+50-ft+High+Hand+auger+site%3Alowes.com). If the snake passes its full length easily, a jetter might do a better job of cleaning the drain. But if the snake gets stuck or takes effort to push through, a sewer jetter likely won’t make it past that point.
The issue might occur because of the wrong link formatting. Here is the correct formatting: [50 Ft hand auger](https://www.google.com/search?q=Kobalt+1%2F2-in+x+50-ft+High+Hand+auger+site%3Alowes.com)
Here is how it looked in your widget: [50 Ft hand auger]([https://www.google.com/search?q=Kobalt+1%2F2-in+x+50-ft+High+Hand+auger+site%3Alowes.com)
Also, devs suggested adding this recommendation to the chatbot instruction:
Whenever relevant, include links from the knowledge base if they exist. This helps provide more accurate, helpful, and verifiable responses. If a topic mentioned in the prompt matches an entry in the knowledge base, add the corresponding link directly to the output.
Thanks to your suggestion, we’ve compiled a list of basic recommendations to help improve chatbot performance and response accuracy. You can check them out here: Basic Tips for Your AI Chatbot Instruction.
We really appreciate you pointing us in this direction
