Google’s Merchant Center opened a aviator past week that shows retailers what shopping-related questions group inquire AI Mode and AI Overviews about.
Brodie Clark, an independent SEO advisor who sewage entree connected a customer sub-account, published screenshots and called it the first Google merchandise to springiness query information for these surfaces
The query information is new, and it’s useful if you tally a merchandise feed. But it’s important to cognize Google groups the questions alternatively than listing them individually. So what you get successful the study are the vocabulary of a class alternatively of the queries themselves.
That’s capable query information to show you which attributes to adhd to your merchandise listings, but it won’t show you whether AI Mode sent anyone to your site.
What Shipped
The study is called AI capacity insights, and Google’s thief archiving describes it arsenic showing really a marque is discovered crossed AI Mode and AI Overviews. If you person access, you’ll find it in Merchant Center nether Analytics, past Products, past the AI capacity tab.
Google announced the reporting astatine Google Marketing Live successful May, astir 7 weeks earlier the aviator opened.
What It Tells You
The study sorts shopping questions by query type, utilizing Google’s examplesof searching by category, researching merchandise specs, aliases looking for reviews. Query frequency shows really celebrated a fixed type has been.
Phase of shopping journey groups the questions by really acold on the shopper is. Product terms are the words shoppers scope for erstwhile they picture what they want, pinch Google’s archiving giving “maximum cushioning” and “arch support” arsenic examples. Share of voice compares your AI impressions against your competitors’.
Google’s archiving is clear astir what to do pinch each this:
- Click done to each merchandise position and activity the applicable concepts into merchandise titles and descriptions.
- Check the celebrated attributes against what’s missing from your merchandise data.
The 2nd constituent is the astir actionable item successful the report. Attribute completeness has agelong been a communal challenge, and now you tin adjacent the spread pinch a clear request awesome from Google’s AI surfaces. If shoppers successful your class are often asking astir a characteristic your provender doesn’t have, that’s an easy fix.
What The Metrics Actually Are
None of the metrics successful Merchant Center’s AI Performance insights show you a existent mobility anyone typed.
You understand the style of the demand, alternatively than the request itself. That’s why the merchandise position service good arsenic input feeds but aren’t suitable arsenic a keyword list.
Share of sound should beryllium viewed successful a akin way. Google calculates it arsenic your AI impressions divided by full impressions crossed you and your competitors, and you can’t alteration that competitor set, because it’s defined by the competitors already disposable successful Merchant Center. It tin besides nutrient numbers that look for illustration capacity and aren’t. If you deficiency capable impressions, stock of sound displays arsenic a zero. If your relationship has nary competitors defined, it displays arsenic 100%.
The scope filters transportation their ain limits. Traffic is restricted to integrated AI traffic, and paid ads postulation isn’t included. Product class filters 1 class astatine a time, and location isn’t a study that covers each of them. Insights only count conversational queries that bespeak shopping aliases marque intent; thing other isn’t factored in.
How We Got Here
Last month, Google began testing dedicated generative AI capacity reports successful Search Console, starting pinch a subset of UK sites. Those reports show impressions surgery retired by page, country, instrumentality and date. They don’t see click data, and they don’t see query-level metrics. Both absences were the communicative astatine the time, and some are still open.
The aforesaid week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority imposed a behaviour requirement connected Google covering patient controls and reporting. The CMA’s interpretive notes telephone for impressions, click-throughs and click-through rates for hunt generative AI features, separated from different parts of wide search. The click and click-through complaint reporting hasn’t appeared. Under the CMA’s decision, Google has 9 months to instrumentality each changes.
In July, Google told CMOs that third-party AI-visibility devices don’t person entree to its soul metrics, and named Search Console and Merchant Center reporting arsenic the baseline for search gains. That was 3 weeks earlier this aviator lit up.
Line those up and the aviator sounds differently. Google has put AI reporting successful beforehand of 2 different audiences successful 2 months, some times arsenic a constricted test. The first answered neither of the 2 questions group asked. This 1 answers half of one, for merchants, successful the US, pinch paid postulation excluded and clicks still missing.
Where Google Filed It
In June, SEJ contributor Slobodan Manic based on that Google put AI visibility wrong Search Console connected purpose, and that the filing determination was itself an argument. AI visibility is hunt visibility, truthful it belongs successful the hunt tool, and companies show you what they judge by wherever they walk engineering.
The Merchant Center aviator doesn’t refute that. Google’s CMO guidance names some dashboards arsenic first-party reporting, truthful thing present contradicts the position that AI visibility gets measured wherever hunt visibility gets measured. The grouped query accusation landed successful the dash merchants usage for feeds, not the 1 everyone other opens to cheque hunt performance.
Why This Matters For Search Professionals
With entree to the Merchant Center pilot, you get 2 things that alteration a workflow. You get a request awesome to prioritize against, which is simply a different input from thing successful Search Console, and stock of sound becomes a number that will onshore successful a monthly study whether anyone has explained it yet.
As for the rest, Clark isn’t truthful optimistic, and he drew the Search Console comparison himself:
“In its existent form, akin to the caller rollout of AI reporting successful Search Console, location isn’t a awesome woody of actionability down the data, though it is bully to spot astatine slightest immoderate shape of query information being included – thing that has been lacking successful GSC.”
Most merchants don’t person it yet, and holding an eligible Merchant Center relationship isn’t enough, since the aviator covers a constricted number of US accounts. The cheque is whether an AI capacity tab has appeared. Until it does, your AI reporting is the belief information successful Search Console and thing more.
Sites without a merchandise provender don’t get these grouped shopping-query insights astatine all. Affiliate sites, reappraisal sites and editorial teams publishing purchaser guides compete for the aforesaid AI Mode answers arsenic the brands they constitute about, and their reporting is Search Console’s belief data, which covers the aforesaid 2 AI surfaces without immoderate query dimension. The spread this aviator narrows for merchants stays precisely arsenic wide for everyone other successful the aforesaid result.
Agencies person a different problem, which is the share-of-voice number itself. It travels good successful a platform and severely successful a conversation, because it’s comparative to a competitor group the merchant didn’t prime and can’t edit. A zero tin mean bladed impressions. A 100 tin mean an quiet competitor list. Neither 1 is simply a bad quarter, and some will look for illustration 1 connected a slide.
What Still Can’t Be Measured
Clicks stay the astir important information constituent we’re missing. After a twelvemonth of covering this topic, we’re still facing the aforesaid question, and this study doesn’t supply an reply either. Impressions show really often a nexus to your merchandise appeared, and John Mueller has clarified really those impressions are counted. These rules besides use to stock of voice, arsenic that metric is based connected impressions.
Individual queries aren’t accessible astatine the moment, and the specifications astir your competitor group haven’t been shared. As of now, Google hasn’t announced if grouped query accusation will beryllium disposable successful Search Console, particularly for sites that don’t person merchandise feeds.
Looking Ahead
Google says the aviator will grow to Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand successful the coming months, which will show you whether the metrics clasp up nether much accounts and categories.
The unfastened mobility is whether immoderate of this crosses over. Google said successful June that it would adhd metrics to the Search Console reports complete time, without naming which ones aliases when.
The nearest fixed constituent is the CMA’s nine-month implementation window, which covers engagement reporting including clicks and click-through rates for UK publishers. That’s a different dashboard, a different assemblage and a different jurisdiction from this pilot.
If you want to beryllium portion of discussions pinch manufacture leaders like Loren Baker, Brent Csutoras, Shelley, Katie, Heather, Roger and myself, then cheque retired SEJ Pro and beryllium portion of the caller organization wherever conversations hap earlier they go manufacture news.
More Resources:
- Google’s Product Feed Strategy Points To The Future Of Retail Discovery
- Agentic Commerce Optimization: A Technical Guide To Prepare For Google’s UCP
- Surviving The Impression Squeeze: How Agentic Commerce Is Changing Google Ads In 2026
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