Google offers retailers AI performance insights in Merchant Center

Image credit: Search Engine Journal

Google launched a pilot program in its Merchant Center, providing retailers with new AI performance insights and offering grouped shopping query data from AI Mode and AI Overviews to highlight product data deficiencies.

The initiative, available in the United States, aims to equip retailers with demand signals from Google‘s generative AI search features, allowing them to optimize product attributes and enhance visibility in AI-driven search results.

The new report aggregates query data, presenting the vocabulary of a product category rather than individual search terms, according to industry expert Brodie Clark. This approach helps retailers identify broader gaps in their product descriptions and attributes.

Metrics within the insights include the type of query, its frequency, the phase of the shopping journey it represents and specific product terms such as ‘maximum cushioning.’ Retailers also receive a ‘share of voice’ metric, calculated as AI impressions divided by total impressions across a brand and its competitors.

Slobodan Manic, an industry analyst, noted that the share of voice metric has limitations, including showing zero for insufficient impressions or 100 percent if no competitors are defined. The data is also restricted to organic AI traffic and excludes paid advertisements, filtering one product category at a time.

This pilot program follows Google’s earlier introduction of generative AI performance reports within Search Console, which similarly provided aggregated data without individual click or query-level details. The company said that both Search Console and Merchant Center reporting serve as baseline tools for tracking gains in AI visibility.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the United Kingdom previously mandated Google to provide more granular data for its search generative AI features, specifically requiring impressions, click-throughs and click-through rates. These specific data points remain absent from Google’s current AI performance insights.

Despite the limitations, the insights offer retailers a valuable, albeit partial, view into how consumers are interacting with AI-powered search surfaces, enabling them to refine their product information for improved discoverability.

Source: Search Engine Journal