Google has added three new metric sections to the Merchant Center AI Performance Insights report: AI Search intent, AI Search terms and AI Attributes. The update, spotted by Brodie Clark and posted to X on September 9, gives merchants a breakdown of how their products match AI-driven shopping queries rather than just a count of impressions.
This is the third change to the same report in roughly two weeks. Google expanded AI Performance Insights to four additional countries on September 4. Four days later, on September 8, researchers found the report’s underlying prompt scaffolding exposed in its source code, a glimpse at how Google frames AI search analysis internally. The new metric sections landed September 9, the same week, per Search Engine Roundtable’s reporting.
Taken together, the pattern reads less like a single feature drop and more like a report being built out into a real measurement surface. A tool that started in July as a basic AI-visibility dashboard now has geographic reach, an internal logic that researchers can inspect, and, as of this week, metrics that map to specific merchant actions.
The three additions each target a different lever. AI Search intent shows how a merchant’s product catalog matches the AI searches customers are running, shifting the report from a traffic count to a relevance diagnostic. AI Search terms recommends specific vocabulary to add to product descriptions, based on what already surfaces those products in AI search. AI Attributes flags missing product attributes for listings that already appear in AI search results, tying the recommendation directly to an existing gap rather than a general best practice.
Google also revised the report’s help documentation to match, according to a comparison Clark included in his post. The company has not published a changelog or a rollout timeline for the new sections, and it has not said whether they will reach the same set of regions as the base report or arrive on a delayed schedule for newly added countries.
The absence of a stated rollout schedule matters more here than it would for a cosmetic UI change. Merchants in the four countries added on September 4 do not yet know whether they have access to the September 9 metrics, and Google’s own announcement gives no way to check beyond opening the report.
What is notable is the direction of travel: each of the three recent changes adds either reach (more countries) or depth (more metrics, more visible logic) rather than replacing what came before. That is the profile of a product moving from beta instrumentation toward something merchants are expected to act on regularly, not a one-off pilot Google might quietly retire.
Merchants running Merchant Center should check whether AI Search intent, AI Search terms and AI Attributes have appeared in their own account this week, and if so, treat the term and attribute recommendations as a discrete audit task rather than folding them into routine catalog maintenance. Given how quickly this report has changed since July, teams that build a recurring check into their workflow now will catch the next addition before it goes unnoticed for a news cycle.
Search Engine Roundtable reported this update on September 9, 2026, citing Brodie Clark’s post on X.
