Google Debuts Agentic Tools to Prep Retailers for Holidays
Google is unveiling agentic artificial intelligence commerce updates for merchants ahead of this year’s holiday shopping season.
“Finding the perfect holiday gift has always taken thought and research, and today’s shoppers are increasingly turning to AI to discover products, compare options, and make buying decisions,” the company said in a news release Wednesday (Sept. 16).
“To succeed in this new era of commerce, businesses need to know how customers are discovering them through conversational experiences,” Google added.
With that in mind, the company has added what it calls AI “performance insights” to its Merchant Center for businesses in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the U.S.
According to Google, this feature gives retailers a clearer picture of how their brand and products are being discovered by “comparing their share of voice” with other brands on surfaces like AI Mode and AI Overviews, while allowing them to take action to further increase discoverability.
We’d love to be your preferred source for news.
Please add us to your preferred sources list so our news, data and interviews show up in your feed. Thanks!
Google is also rolling out updates to the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) integration hub in the Merchant Center. UCP already allows for direct checkout for hundreds of thousands of brands and retailers across Google.
“Now, merchants who use the hub for UCP-powered checkout can also enable capabilities like cart transfer to a merchant site and enhanced checkout flow testing, with analytics and more coming soon,” the release said.
These new capabilities are gradually being introduced in the U.S., with Australia and Canada to follow early in 2027, Google added.
Will the 2026 shopping season go agentic? PYMNTS Intelligence asks that question in a new report bearing the same title, finding that the answer is “yes.”
“It just won’t happen the way most people expect,” the report said. “Merchants will try to steer shoppers to their own agents inside their own closed ecosystems, each with its own assortment, its own terms and its own checkout. Consumers will send agents out to find the best price, the fastest delivery and the easiest returns.”
According to PYMNTS intelligence research, 39 million U.S. adults — 15% of the adult population — have traded traditional channels for AI-driven product discovery. In all, 139 million Americans have made a retail purchase with the help of artificial intelligence.
Nearly a quarter of consumers surveyed (24%) would let an AI agent shop and buy for them, though a smaller number (14%) would permit an AI app to hold their card.
